Tayloe Piggott Gallery is pleased to present Equilibrium, an exhibition of paintings by artist Susan Vecsey. Vecsey’s work exists in a realm between landscape and Color Field painting, where the opportunity for interpretation lies in the viewer’s gaze. Her most recent body of work includes ten paintings inspired by the colors and contours of Wyoming’s topography.
Susan Vecsey is a New York-based artist who paints abstractions that are rooted in perception. Minimal and captivating, these universal images illuminate how color, sfumato, and form can remind each viewer of an ethereal place, memory, or dream. Vecsey’s work presents what feel like peaceful meditations on landscapes.
The poured paintings appear seamless and fluid, though there is a calculated structure behind each blanket of color. The shapes come from landscapes the artist has seen and that live in her memory, sans photograph. Once she is in the studio she processes her vision with numerous color studies and determinations of scale in terms of how shapes are sitting within the stretch of the canvas. The real joy in the work for her is layering the paint to achieve color saturation with close attention to the creation of a beautiful surface. of the work for her is layering the color to a saturated effect to create a beautiful surface. “I’m really 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 then looks for a satisfying harmony and balance. “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 and what painting is about for 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. In 2012, Vecsey was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. 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.
