Hello and welcome to the 32nd interview for my blog 3 Art Questions With Jackson! This interview with Susan Wagner is really cool because she is a great abstract painter and she is friends with someone who taught me in elementary school. Small world! Susan's paintings are really deep and her answers were very thoughtful. I can really relate when she talks about the emotional part of making art. Thanks for reading!
Jackson: What inspired you to begin making abstract paintings? Did you always love art or did you have a specific experience?
Susan: I started out as a landscape painter and just kept digging deeper into what attracted me to it. I decided to keep going with abstraction after I took a painting I had done and, using only black oil paint on gessoed paper, I painted just the shapes and lines that were the essence of the composition and the heart of it. I did that a lot, years ago, and it got me going in that direction, which was very satisfying for me on many levels. I found that I was attracted to the interplay of shapes and it's interesting to work out the problems, but I was also connecting to my emotional stake in it. It's definitely bringing the inside, out.
I always loved art on some level. My mother has art books around when I was growing up and she had a knack for color combinations and harmony in the way she decorated her house. She was also deeply into poetry and was usually thinking about it. I think that maybe closely observing a mother who was closely observing human behavior and other things set me up to feeling a connection with art.
Jackson: How has the pandemic changed how your make your art? Were any of your shows postponed or cancelled?
Susan: The pandemic really didn't change the way I make art - I did make less work. The enormity of what was happening around me was all consuming. But I eventually starting working in the studio again. In terms of show fallout, all my open studios were cancelled and some group shows I was in ended up being online. And so, there was no way to interact with people responding to the work. In my view, that's a necessary energy to have. That in-person energy between the viewer, the artwork, the artist, and even the space it all takes place in.
Jackson: If you could meet any artist living or dead, who would it be and why?
Susan: There are quite a few artists I would love to meet. Very hard to narrow it down. Today, I'm going to say Peter Doig because of the ways he paints, and what he paints feels deeply personal yet accessible.
https://www.susanwagnerart.com/
