Featured Artist Susan McLaughlin

These fanciful paintings by Susan McLaughlin combine figurative work with nature. See more of her delightful art by visiting her website.

 

 

After prowling the sleepy hollows in the Connecticut woods as a child, drawing and painting all things natural, I advanced to prowling the hallowed halls of New York City academia, drawing and painting all things human.

 

 

Although I earned a BFA from Parsons School of Design and an MA from New York University, I received something even more valuable from my school in the woods—a deep reverence for all things natural. The synthesis of these two different paths has led me to my current mantra-harmony between nature and humanity.

 

 

I am thrilled to be an artist because I can create my own worlds.

 

 

In these worlds, I am an explorer, uncovering, recording and rearranging the beauty of the natural world as well as the beauty of human beings. I select and distill the essence of my subject, harmony between nature and humanity, and fuse the two. This symbiosis makes the finished work even more powerful than either of its constituents alone.

 

 

In my personal worlds, you will notice a lot of extraordinary things happening. For instance, I might substitute a bird for a hat, or a butterfly for a bowtie.

 

 

These substitutions function as symbols and provide subtle clues and playful suggestions about my work. The shapes of birds and hats, or butterflies and bowties, are so similar that viewers never even question the replacements.

 

 

I pick the substitutes because they fit graphically and visually. But it is more than that. We as humans fit with nature. We fit together so well, in fact, that I am able to paint a natural object–a butterfly–in place of the bowtie, and viewers can see this as truth.

 

 

To create my existential paintings, I use classic techniques, brushing acrylic paint wet on wet onto gessoed linen. Although my juxtapositions of flora and fauna are a cross between romantic and realistic, I meticulously render each and every component, whether plant or animal, in a manner that retains its natural beauty.

 

 

For the last few years my paintings and I have been prowling around museums and galleries up and down the East Coast, including the Monmouth Museum, The Bonnet House Museum, NSU Art Museum and the Arnot Art Museum. My gallery exhibits have included Aqua Art Miami, ArtExpo New York, Art Basel Miami, Municipal Gallery, Newtown, Connecticut, Martha Gault Gallery, Pennsylvania, Armstrong Gallery, Georgia and Dacia Gallery, New York City.

 

 

 

Still prowling, I am extremely happy to find myself here, smack in the middle of the zeitgeist on Artsy Shark!

 

Artist Susan McLaughlin invites you to follow her on Facebook and her Blog.

 

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