SUSAN VECSEY
18 FEBRUARY – 28 MARCH 2021
SUSAN VECSEY EQUILIBR IUM
TAYLOE PIGGOTT GALLERY 62 SOUTH GLENWOOD STREET JACKSON HOLE WYOMING TEL 307 733 0555 TAYLOEPIGGOTTGALLERY.COM
EQUILIBR IUM by Katie Franklin
Equilibrium, the title of Susan Vecsey’s exhibition, is a deeply referential concept referring to the balance or stasis produced by equally opposing forces. At a unique time in our collective human history where equilibrium feels just beyond our grasp, Vecsey provides a much-needed respite, a visual meditative calm with just enough surface tension to bring a wide range of human emotions bubbling to the surface from within. Through thinly veiled surfaces of oil almost hovering, sometimes shimmering, on linen, the New York-based painter creates her own visual language of abstraction rooted in perception. Minimal and captivating, Vecsey’s universal images—landscape-like, with what our eye reads as certainly sky above a horizon line of carefully transposed colors—illuminate how color and form can remind each viewer of an ethereal place, memory, or dream. Paying homage to Color Field artists like Frankenthaler and Rothko, among many others, Vecsey’s work also presents what feels like peaceful meditations on landscapes. But to call them merely landscapes would be a misrepresentation. In an essay written for Susan Vecsey’s Greenville County Museum of Art solo exhibition catalogue, Phyllis Tuchman writes: “Vecsey’s abstractions call to mind both Color Field paintings as well as landscapes. They exist somewhere in the middle, neither one nor the other. For starters, instead of working with acrylic pigments and yards of unstretched canvas as a Color Field artist might do, Vecsey executes her evocative pictures the old-fashioned way. To linen surfaces, she applies layers of oil pigments. Depending on the weather, it can take days for each plane of color she has thinned with turpentine to dry.”
Equilibrium posits a number of extra-large, moody canvases that read like visual poetry. Deep inky indigo melds into murky turquoise and warm ochre-green, then grey, and finally a dark Grecian blue in Untitled (Indigo/Violet). On a slightly smaller vertical canvas, a block of cobalt settles atop tonal whites, an elegant S-curve of cream may indicate a road or the curve of a snow-covered hill, a beach, perhaps, or something more abstract. The shapes derive from landscapes she’s seen and that live in her memory, but the work emotes more fervently than, perhaps, nature itself. Wherever the mind takes the viewer, “this is virtuoso painting,” as Franklin Einspruch once wrote in Artcritical (in reference to her debut exhibition with Berry Campbell Gallery in Chelsea, 2014). Vecsey’s work appears seamless and fluid, but there is a calculated structure behind each blanket of color. Once in the studio, she processes her vision with numerous color studies and determinations of scale in terms of how the shapes are sitting within the stretch of the canvas. The real joy for Vecsey is layering the paint to achieve color saturation with close attention to the creation of a beautiful surface. “I’m obsessed with the surface of the painting,” she says. Often simplifying what she sees, Vecsey pursues restraint in form and color. Within each work, the shapes and colors unite to suggest the light of the sun sinking into the horizon, the subtle slope of a hillside, or the curve of a riverbed—all embodying the elusive beauty of nature. Over time, Vecsey’s work has become more minimalist in color and composition. “I’m interested in bringing the composition down to its essence,” she says. Through many color studies, she finally decides on a group of "four or five colors that lock together, and that’s really satisfying,” she says. She looks for harmony and balance. "The paintings reflect harmony in
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color and composition, and hopefully result in a peacefulness and balance, which is not just emotional, it’s a physical thing that relates to painting and what painting is about to me”. Born in Somerville, New Jersey, in 1971, Susan Vecsey currently lives and works in New York City as well as East Hampton, New York. She earned her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University, and her MFA from the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture, where she studied under Graham Nickson. In 2012, Vecsey was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. In 2017, she had solo museum exhibitions at the Greenville County Museum in South Carolina, and the John Jermain Memorial Library, Sag Harbor, New York. More recently, in 2020, Vecsey was included in a group exhibition at the Nassau County Museum of Art, Roslyn Harbor, New York, entitled, blue, curated by Museum Director, Charles A. Riley II, Ph.D. In addition to Vecsey, other artists in the show include Helen Frankenthaler, Yves Klein, Henri Matisse, and contemporary artists including Sean Scully. She is currently part of the Members Exhibition at Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton. Susan Vecsey’s work is widely held in both public and private collections, including the Nassau County Museum, Roslyn, New York, the Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC, and Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY.
Untitled (Lavender/Green), 2020 Oil on linen 68 x 86 inches
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Untitled (Gray), 2020 Oil on linen 48 x 68 inches
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Indigo and Violet, 2020 Oil on linen 68 x 82 inches
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Untitled (Gray/Green), 2020 Oil on canvas 40 x 60 inches
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Untitled (Green with Blue Sky), 2020 Oil on linen 48 x 52 inches
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Untitled (Blue/Green), 2020 Oil on linen 44 x 32 inches
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Untitled (Blue White), 2020 Oil on linen 56 x 36 inches
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Untitled (Cobalt / Green), 2020 Oil on linen 22 x 22 inches
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Untitled (Blue / Green), 2020 Oil on linen 38 x 104 inches
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Untitled (Gray / Turquoise), 2020 Oil on linen 26 x 24 inches
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“The paintings reflect harmony in color and composition, and hopefully result in a peacefulness and balance, which is not just emotional, it’s a physical thing that relates to painting and what painting is about for me.” -Susan Vecsey
THIS CATALOG COMPLEMENTS EQUILIBRIUM AN EXHIBITION WITH SUSAN VECSEY © TAYLOE PIGGOTT GALLERY 2021
62 SOUTH GLENWOOD STREET JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING TEL 307 733 0555 TAYLOEPIGGOTTGALLERY.COM