Susan Vecsey

September 16—October 16, 2010

Contact: Betsy Ann Craig (bac@spanierman.com)

SPANIERMAN GALLERY is pleased to present Susan Vecsey, an exhibition of new abstract landscapes by an artist working in the tradition of Color Field painting and nineteenth-century American Tonalism.  In her canvases, stained with subtle colors, Vecsey captures the feeling of places remembered and deeply felt.  This is the artist’s first solo exhibition at Spanierman Gallery. 

Vecsey was advised by her parents, who came to this country from Hungary in 1969 to “live the American dream,” to be practical and keep her “artistic pursuits on the side.”  Trying to follow this path, she earned numerous degrees and worked in corporate America for many years.  Yet, her true passion for painting and photography—begun during childhood trips with her family—not only remained, but strengthened.  Pursuing a study of art at Barnard College, the Museum of Modern Art, the New York Studio School, the New School, and the International Center of Photography, she transitioned to a full-time career as an artist several years ago.  After working in a realist mode, she experimented with different ways of painting, and eventually found her expressive voice in the rendering of landscapes in an abstract mode.  Drawing on memory, mood, and the feelings inspired by certain places, she reaches beyond the specific to create iconic and timeless evocations of nature.

Vecsey, who has lived part time in East Hampton since 2000, states that she is drawn to “certain landscapes like eastern Long Island and the Midwest because they remind me of visiting my grandparents in rural Hungary as a child and teenager.”  Her work expresses her pleasure in “the whole act of creating, from the anticipation and processing to the realization.”  Staining her surfaces with thinned oil, Vecsey incorporates the linen weave into her images, while guiding the paint drips and pours with a palette knife to produce nuanced textural and tonal effects.   Seeking not to over-embellish with too many colors or forms, she renders illusions of space and movement through sand, mist, fog, and water.  The shimmering light that presides over these meditative scenes seems as much real as spiritual.

Vecsey admires the work of many artists including Cézanne, Picasso, Matisse, Rothko, and Whistler (with whose use of color she feels an affinity).  Her art evokes that of Milton Avery and Helen Frankenthaler. Carrying on a tradition of finding a reality beyond appearances, Vecsey produces quiet landscapes in a contemporary Tonalist vein that do not force themselves on the viewer, allowing us to find ourselves within them.