Susan Skilling | Paintings

Susan Skilling | Paintings

212 Third Avenue South Seattle, WA, USA Thursday, April 2, 2009–Saturday, May 16, 2009

broken dreams by susan skilling

Susan Skilling

BROKEN DREAMS, 2009

1,650 USD

Susan Skilling's paintings are spare and elegant meditations on such widely varied subjects as Tibetan mandalas, plant forms, and slices of rocks, geodes and crystal. Often the work is geometrical but, even then, an organic sensitivity pervades the formal choices made by the artist. Along with artists like Morris Graves or Anne Appleby, Skilling's choices of imagery, color and content lead her in the pursuit of the sublime.

Painting with mineral based gouache paint, some of it handmade by the artist, Skilling creates a dense layering of subtly nuanced color over a handmade Thai mulberry paper surface. Her palette is somber and modest, with occasional highlights of brilliant, saturated color.

I have watched the progress of Susan's paintings over the 25 years she has shown in Seattle. From the first time I encountered these delicate subtle paintings I have been intrigued by them. Since her early shows with Foster/White Gallery, each body of her work has been a slow, quiet revelation of this artists path toward a personal enlightenment. This is the kind of artist who is led by her inner voice and not by the dictates of fashion or the marketplace. Nonetheless, her work has maintained a broad area of contact with contemporary concerns in painting. I am pleased to announce that we now represent her work exclusively in the Northwest.

- Greg Kucera, Director