Susan B. Viemeister
PAINTING PRACTISE
Painting is meditation for me, the breath is the movement of the brush, the spread of color and mixing of hues on a palette, the touch of brush to canvas. This focus, this convergence of attention to the mixing of color with a palette knife, to the arrangement of shapes and forms eventually gives way to the complexity of and feeling of a greater whole. The process of painting is connected to the real world by the very common subjects I paint, and the way in which I chose to paint them- through realism- but ultimately, the best painting happens in the process where I lose a sense of time and place.
I come to painting to find calm, solitude and even a sense of play. I love that quiet place. And more than the resulting artwork, it is this process that draws me to being a painter. But I believe that the act of making art gives us an opportunity to become a part of a certain universality of feeling and timelessness of commonly held experience. In the end it is my hope that my painted images of common objects and scenes can bring an experience of like kind to the viewer.
Painting begins with a spark of visual interest, something I have seen, how natural light has chosen to illuminate and define a scene. I am continually riveted by natural light. Light creates evocative moments, poetic interplays of objects in the seen world, a presence.
But light is fleeting, in the brief time of a pulled breath in and out, what is illuminated has changed. How to capture that slice of time? Nearly all my paintings start with the quickness of snapping an actual photograph. It is from that primary image, that witness to that moment, from which I work. The next step happens in the calm and isolation of the studio. Photos of these moments are reviewed, and one is chosen, a slight cropping of the image may happen. Otherwise, I work from that original image and what I saw and felt that day, in that distinct moment. Originally with the camera’s eye, I use the tools of its edges to begin the composition of an image, a process of recognizing the supporting characters of a composition is equally important to me. I carve and construct an image from the seen world, choosing what is to be held in the edges of the softer edges of the canvas.
SOME BACKGROUND
Drawing and being involved with art making since early memory, I launched into photography as a creative interest at the age of ten, with the selection of a camera as a prize for selling garden seeds (both seeds and a camera being prescient to my life in general). Supported in photography by the use of my brother’s camera and darkroom, and excellent darkroom and photo fine art training in high school, photography became my primary expressive medium for years. During further education at Kansas City Art Institute, Pratt Institute in NY, and finally Oakland’s California College of Arts and Crafts; I studied and practiced photography, drawing, printmaking, book construction and painting, earning a degree in painting and drawing. During and after that time, I made a living for years at black and white photographic processing and printing (all pre-digital age!). Eventually, I came out into the light in new ways, giving up photography as my art practice, to focus on painting; and giving up darkroom photo processing as a vocation for life out in the sunlight! I went on to study horticulture and landscape architecture and, initially in Central California and then in Central Virginia, I practiced as a professional gardener and landscape designer for over thirty years. All art skills I had studied and developed over the years were applied to my new garden vocation. Time spent outside, and in daylight in the natural world, was cherished.
Prior to and after retiring from landscape design, I turned back to spending more time working on painting and drawing skills and on the direction of the work, and pursuing exhibitions. Now, besides hiking and carving out a garden from scratch at our new home in Western North Carolina, I apply most of my creative energy to the joys of art making.
Painting above: The Bowl, Oil on Canvas, 18”x24”
Susan B. Viemeister 434-996-5077 sbviemeister@gmail.com