Susan Barnes
Susan Barnes grew up in Alaska where the landscape was a constant inspiration. She received her MFA at SUNY Buffalo in New York in 1982. In addition, she attended Portland State University, University of Montana and the Rocky Mountain School of Photography. Her evocative landscapes combine elements of photography, collage and painting with a fluidity of motion expressed through her passionate hand. The sense of place Barnes creates is both expansive and introspective, much like the landscape she experienced during her youth spent in Alaska and Montana. Barnes’ thirty year tenure as an artist has brought her here to Maine where she creates unique and moving vistas using the mediums she loves; paint, collage and photography.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
In this body of work, Inventing Ground, I want to create a sense of physical movement through vast exterior spaces that suggest the earth without depicting it. The painted lines are not only a means of eye movement across a composition, but an allusion to human activity on the ground.
I like to think a painting on a two dimensional surface can offer a sense of expansion the way an uninterrupted horizon does in nature. I like to think a mark in paint and a scratch on a surface will be a road for some viewers and a bird for others. I want this work to be liberating and physical.
I sense agriculture, architecture, bodies of water, lines of piers, fences, stakes when I paint. I remember places I have viewed from trains or planes--the sense of landing and taking off in the body. Gravity!
In the language of paint there can be unlimited freedom in interpretation. These paintings are like views at a glance in motion from afar. You can't be sure. There is no right or wrong. There is only initially a sense of ground, light, and movement across the earth, sky or water and, ultimately a point of view.
- Susan Barnes
