SUSAN LYON & SCOTT BURDICK: INSPIRING MINDS By Michael Clawson
HUSBAND-AND-WIFE PAINTERS SCOTT BURDICK AND SUSAN LYON ENLIGHTEN EACH OTHER IN THE STUDIO AND ON THE ROAD.
Many years ago, Scott Burdick and Susan Lyon were traveling through Asia and while they were in Nepal their Sherpa guide was suggesting places they could paint. “Maybe you’d like to climb Mount Everest and paint it?” the guide asked. Burdick shook his head, “No, there are no people up there.”
His answer is a small nod to the couple’s painting interests, namely figures, but it also reveals a larger truth about the aspect that drives them and their art—the human experience. Their work isn’t made in a vacuum with a mindless avatar as their sitter. They work with individuals, talk to them, learn about them, capture their emotions and incorporate those emotions into the finished paintings. Any artist could flip through a clothing catalog for reference material, but working with actual people—with hopes and dreams, all their quirks and behavioral tics, all their personality traits—allows an artist to discover something unique during a painting session. For Burdick and Lyon, they are searching for emotional certainty, a genuineness within the paint.
The married artists, who have been together for 30 years, will be showing their new work in the exhibition A Closer Look — Home and Abroad: The Art of Susan Lyon and Scott Burdick beginning November 16 at Maxwell Alexander Gallery in Los Angeles. The couple lives in Quaker Gap, North Carolina, at the base of the Hanging Rock State Park. Behind their house they have two small cottages that serve as their separate studios, though Lyon also has a studio in nearby Winston-Salem, where she can clock in and avoid distractions. “I like my home studio, but I need it to feel like I’m going to work, which can be difficult when your work is at your home,” she says. “The other studio is also great because it’s a place for all our artist friends to come and paint.
Sometimes we’ll have everyone chip in so we can get a model and all paint together. It’s a different kind of space and I like both.”
Although they’ve been together for three decades, the two artists paint very differently, in technique and in their general windup within their respective studio processes. “I take my time. I love to start a lot of pieces and then just stare at them, taking breaks between each one. I’ll do that with 20 pieces, just work them in stages,” Lyon says. “Scott is the exact opposite. He’ll start one and finish it right away. He can work on things until they’re all done, and I just can’t do that the way he does.”
She continues, “People would assume we talk art, but we don’t. I met him at 19 years old. I was the adoring student. He adores me and he’s my biggest fan, but we just approach things very differently. I wish I could paint like him. He’s so bold and so free. I’ve never had that ability. For me I have to just stay true to myself, just stick to it and stay above board with everything,” she says. “He’s more of a loner and he doesn’t understand the aspect of being scared, or being afraid of the canvas, because he’s so confident as an artist. I’m scared to see my work, or even come to the studio sometime, but Scott will take people from a Burger King and show them his studio.”
Burdick shares many of his wife’s characterizations of their studios, and cherishes those differences. One thing he applauds her on is her mixing of different mediums, which he calls an “adventurous” aspect of her work. “There are good and bad things to being married to an artist. The good thing is both of us are interested in the same things. I remember before I met her, no one wanted to have a long-term relationship with me because all I wanted to do was paint,” he says. “I’ll never forget, during our Nepal trip, we found a great place to paint in this remote area. Our guide couldn’t understand why we would want to go there, and he was trying to get us to go to all the tourist spots. We finally got to where we wanted to go, and it was these wrecked boats with these people living on them. Our guide was so triumphant, ‘See, there is nothing here!’ He then got very confused because we were so excited to be there to paint these people in this location. A spouse who wasn’t an artist would have never wanted to stop.”
The one negative thing about being married to an artist, he says, is that neither one is free to handle the business side of their studios, which is a common role for spouses of artists. “Not only do neither of us want to do it, but we also have twice as much business as a single artist,” he says. “It’s a problem we tend to neglect.”
The aspect that unites them most, though, is their deep desire to capture truth and reverence from the human form. Both artists talk to their models, empathize with their personal stories and remain emotionally responsive to what they are hearing during their painting sessions. Small and large observations can lead to important discoveries: the shape of a smile, the crack in a voice, a change in breathing, a flushing in the cheeks or the intensity of a stare. All of it can inform a painting. Also, by just observing, they begin to unlock universal themes that transcend the subject itself. “I love when people look at our paintings from Africa, and the people in them are very different than Sue and I, and they immediately connect with the subjects. They’ll say the person reminds them of their sister or grandmother. When you start getting down to it, we’re all alike. We all have the same hopes and dreams and emotions,” Burdick says. “A painting can bring that all home even if the subjects are very different than you or I.”
These universal emotions can be seen in the couple’s newest pieces, including in Burdick’s Divya’s World, an oil showing a young girl with her arms raised into the leaves of two large bushes she’s standing between, and in Lyon’s Her Time Has Come, a work in pastel and acrylic that shows a female figure glancing with piercing eyes and a small smile as she is positioned in front of a geometric arrangement of shapes. Burdick’s works largely feature subjects from around the world, including India, Tibet and China. He captures joy in Tibetan Sisters, innocence in Helping Hand and grace in Holy Procession. Lyon’s works include several charcoal and acrylic pieces—including Always Having Hope and Faith in Herself, both of which present delicate portraits with acrylic embellishments—as well as Oracle, which is meant to invoke the sacred image of the Madonna.
Together, the bodies of work reveal two artists who are immensely confident in their process, their technique, their paint and each other. Their studios don’t overlap all that much, but their lives and interests do, and it shows in their work, all of which exemplifies the human spirit.