Susannah Phillips “Studios and Storerooms”

Bookstein Projects

[Image: Susannah Phillips "Untitled" (2021) Oil on canvas, 16 x 22 in.]

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Bookstein Projects presents an exhibition of new paintings by Susannah Phillips. This is the artist’s seventh solo show with Bookstein Projects.

Every painting in this exhibit depicts an interior. One group is a view into a studio from an adjacent room, a second the interior of a former icehouse, now used as a storeroom. The most recent paintings are of racks in a studio storeroom.

Though familiar to the artist, the subject matter is not immediately clear to the viewer. Indeed, many of the compositions are so abstracted they might be interpreted as pure non-objective painting. As it is with all her work, long looking is rewarded: throughlines from painting to painting allow the environments to coalesce into painting racks, easels, doorways and cupboards.

While the artist paints each subject many times over, the brushwork and degree of abstraction are unique to each painting. Some stretched canvases might be depicted with quickly painted black lines in one composition, others with an attenuated swath of umber. Likewise, a variety of palettes ranging from buttery yellows and electric limes to Baltic blues and sanguine reds give rise to different emotive effects.

Her earlier work bore the influences of Giorgio Morandi and André Derain. These latest paintings, on the other hand, look to Joaquín Torres-García and the members of his Taller.

Susannah Phillips was born in 1952 in Boston, Massachusetts but was raised in London. She attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London, studying under William Coldstream and Euan Uglow. Her paintings have been in exhibitions in London, New York, Montreal and Provincetown, MA, and are included in numerous private collections. In 2014 and 2017, she was awarded the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation Residency. The artist lives and works in New York City.