The Female Eye: Spotlight on Susan Goldsmith

Susan Goldsmith, Lavender Lullaby, (Triptych) Silver Leaf with Pigment Print, Metallic Watercolors, Acrylic Paint, and Resin on Panel, 30” x 30”

In my work, I am particularly drawn to the simple beauty of mutable natural environments, focusing on the cycles of nature, sunlight and shadow, time’s passage and human perception. Much of my subject matter comes from exploration, from living in the Northern California landscape, hiking the mountain landscapes surrounding Jackson Hole, Wyoming to roaming Central Park and the Brooklyn Botanical Garden in New York.

While some of my methodologies derive from traditional painting, I also incorporate and invent new techniques to paint with that can include gilding on film, creating textures to gild and paint on, as part of my process. Although initially inspired by antique Chinese screens, I began to use the leafed panels as backgrounds to reflect light – much like a light box. Art writer Patricia Albers has observed that in my work: “light as fickle and delicious as nature’s asserts the beauty of her subject, shifts, mirrors the room, and then fades.”

I prefer to be known as an artist with a passion for painting; and, at the same time, like the idea of being part of an exhibit of female painters. Since I portray the beauty that I see in the world, the stereotype would be that there is a female behind this view.