A Place of Stillness: Diving Deeper into the Natural World
Susan Stevens' new collection, A Place of Stillness, is now live on our website!
This new body of work focuses less on detail and more on mood. For a long time, Susan has explored how to intertwine poetry and mystery into her work. She describes an "elusive muse" occasionally entering her realm of creativity.
"I treasure the times when it is captured, but these moments are rare. Some call it
magic, some say God had a hand in it. I like to think it is a bit of both."
Through A Place of Stillness, Susan's work evokes a hushed, quiet emotion, with landscapes filtered through hazy memory. Her goal was to "evoke rather than just portray," going deeper into the natural world around her and searching for its "inner significance."
In the Studio: Process Amongst the Challenges
Susan considers herself to be primarily self-taught and believes that creating art is a practice.
“I get in there and I ‘do.’ I do not feel that I have reached any sort of pinnacle, but then again what artist does? My work is ever changing and evolving and I hope that it continues to do so. Who knows where this journey will go?”
As an artist, Susan describes days in the studio where nothing seems to works. She works in both pastel and oil, and alternating between the two mediums can be challenging at times. Fundamentally, the processes are very different, but switching between her preferred mediums is not the only challenge Susan encounters in her creative process.
From a narrative perspective, she finds herself challenged when trying to lean toward abstraction while often defaulting to a more representational approach.
“As Degas said, ‘A painting requires a little mystery, some vagueness and some fantasy. When you always make your meaning perfectly plain, you end up boring people.’”
For this collection, Susan works with soft pastels and sanded paper or panel. She shared that this type of surface "holds the pigment securely and allows for multiple layers, sometimes up to 15 or 20." These layers give Susan the ability to build depth, shift color, and create the atmospheric quality that defines A Place of Stillness.
Diving Into A Place of Stillness
Susan describes her new collection as a body of work that "imbues a moody quiet and meditation." Her favorite piece, Threshold of Blue, was also the piece that came easiest to her. Rather than focusing on a photograph, she allowed herself to step away from a specific reference and let the painting guide her.
“I was no longer focused on a photograph and was able to get out of my head and let the painting lead me along and speak for itself.”
While Threshold of Blue came together naturally, other pieces in the collection required much more experimentation. One of the most challenging was Dawn’s Caress, a skyscape that went through many iterations before Susan felt satisfied with the final result.
“With pastel, pigment can be brushed away, leaving a ‘ghost’ image and allowing for completely different hues.”
This ability to layer, remove, and rework the pigment became an important part of the process, allowing Susan to experiment with color and atmosphere until the piece found its final form.
A Quiet Invitation
At its heart, A Place of Stillness is an invitation to slow down and look a little longer. These landscapes aren't simply meant to portray a particular place. Instead, they leave room for memory, imagination, and emotion.
Susan’s hope is that her work continues to evolve as she does, always searching for new ways to explore the natural world and the mystery within it.
Explore Susan Stevens’ new collection, A Place of Stillness, now live at Caron Gallery.