The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Blending light, colour and texture
Tucked away in an attic studio Susan Paterson creates magic with silver, lace and light.
One of her oil paintings is so magical and skillful it won second place, still life, in the 14th Annual Art Renewal Center's International Salon. She is going to the December 6 opening for its exhibit with close to 100 other winning paintings at the European Museum of Modern Art in Barcelona. The painting will also be on view in New York at Sotheby's in July.
The painting, Artist's Collection, took her 200 hours to complete as she meticulously explored relationships of light, colour, texture and reflection among silver objects with a beautiful silver bowl as the central figure.
This amazing painting, purchased by a Halifax woman, is three by three feet and the Dartmouth artist's largest oil to date. It includes two eggs and a half egg shell.
REFLECTIONS
“There are 15 reflections of eggs in there,” says Paterson, at ease in her home studio. “I just love that part of it – creating a whole other world behind what's there.”
Paterson often uses eggs. “It's a rest for the eye – this plain white – because everything else is more ornate.”
To create her elaborate still lifes, Paterson uses a three-sided, black-box set, then places silver pieces, eggs and fruit within it like actors on a stage.
She drapes lace, blocks the studio windows and lights the objects with a spotlight to create a drama of light and shadow with the receding darkness she loves.
Standing with her brush at a distance from her stage set, Paterson is reflected in the objects she paints though it's hard to see. “I always wear dark clothes. I don't like to stand out too much! It's a little quirk; it's as close as I'll get to a selfportrait.”
THRILLING WIN
Being honoured in the American Art Renewal Center's international, juried, realist contest is thrilling, she says, because Nova Scotia's realist painters often have trouble getting recognition at home.
In fact, she will meet La Have artist Richard Thomas Davis, currently exhibiting at Studio 21 Fine Art, Halifax, to Dec. 20, in Barcelona. He received honourable mention in the Foundation of Arts and Artists' 10th International Figurativas 2019 Painting and Sculpture Competition, which holds a live exhibit also opening Dec. 6 at the European Museum of Modern Art.
“Chris Pratt said when they started out they got a lot of support and we didn't,” says Paterson, who graduated from Mount Allison University in 1980, whereas Pratt, Mary Pratt and Tom Forrestall graduated in the late 1950s. “It's a shame local artists don't get promoted more.”
STARTING YOUNG
Paterson has been stubborn about realism since she was a child growing up in Sydney. At 12, she joined Monday night, adult, art classes taught by the late Sydney artist Thorn Morrow.
“He was kind of an eccentric. He came from California on his motorcycle. He arrived in Sydney and set up this little studio. It was one big room. He had a cot and a hot plate at one end and the rest was tables and chairs to teach art and do art himself.
“He wasn't going to take me at first. He was talking to somebody, it turned out to be a cousin of my dad's, and he said he never liked teaching but there was one little girl – when she came she meant business.”
In grade nine she won first prize, junior high level, in Sydney's city-wide art fair. At 15 she moved to Dartmouth, then went to Mount Allison. It was a predominantly realist school where Ted Pulford – teacher to Forrestall and the Pratts – taught painting. Still, her teachers wanted to push her in directions she didn't choose to go.
“It was a fight through university. 'You've got to loosen up.' I heard that constantly. In my fourth-year figure drawing we had to work big and loose. It wasn't me. I'm not big and loose.”
Paterson is a minimalist when it comes to colour. “The colour is almost monochrome – the greys and the whites – and I pick things up that go with everything else in terms of colour. It's all the subtleties of 50 shades of grey,” she says with a laugh.
STILL LIFE
Within her own confines, Paterson has always sought to challenge herself. She started out professionally as a printmaker doing landscapes and still has press in her basement.
When she needed to be at home with her two small boys, she started painting watercolours of flowers, often snipped from her own garden. Inspired by Dutch still life painting, she took a Dutch still life workshop in Boston at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts.
Ten years ago she decided to explore oil painting. She chose still life as a way to learn a new medium with “something that wasn't moving,” she says.
“It was a big gamble. I had a few really lean years. My first oils I wasn't pleased with. I find I'm having a lot more success with the oils – the prizes and financial success, international recognition.”
Today she is going deeper into still life painting as her work get more and more elaborate but she is also exploring plein air landscape painting.
CAPTURE THE LIGHT
Her friend, Bass River realist painter Joy
Laking, got her started on painting plein air landscape. “It was really hard and it's taken me a long time. Joy and I go at least two weeks a summer and Chris (Gorey) has come too.”
The three recently exhibited their outdoor paintings at the Chase Gallery in the show Outside. “I'm trying to capture the light. With the landscapes I have to anticipate things or memorize things since the light changes quickly. It's kind of nice on a foggy day.”
To practice-quick changing light, she spent the last year painting sunsets through her studio window. “It's something I never thought I could do. It all goes so fast but I learned little tricks.”
As a realist conjuring the past in technique and subject, “I am trying to show the beauty of what's in front of us that we don't usually notice,” says Paterson. “I love getting lost in the details and the challenge of creating an illusion that explains how I feel about what I see.”
CONTESTS AND EXHIBITS
Paterson has had work accepted into the Art Renewal Center's online competition with a printed catalogue four of the five times she has applied and all her works have sold. It's become “one on the largest and most prestigious contests for realist art in the world,” says Paterson.
She just wrapped up an exhibit with Cathy Ross at Gallery 75 in Fredericton, N.B., and has been exhibiting in solo shows at Fog Forest Gallery, Sackville, N.B., since 1985.
Janet Crawford, owner of Fog Forest, says Paterson is “one of the most talented artists” she represents.
“Whether the subject is landscape or still life – her attention to detail and light is a signature of her work.
“Although her art is finely executed and highly representational – it is always “painterly” and always bears Susan's interpretation and her quiet nature.”
MY WAY
With a quiet determination Paterson has stuck to her own path since she was a little girl.
People often ask her to paint more cherries, strawberries and lemons. “I enjoy doing those but I want to do them on my own terms. My art's evolved over the years and I want to keep doing what I want. These contests challenge me to get better and better.”