Susan Peterson’s artwork engages with text, systems, and gridded abstraction. Each piece begins with an armature text written, edited and organized to fit, letter by letter, into a specific gridded composition. The text and the grid are provided on the back of each piece.
Color, shape, scale, and other painting concerns are an aspect of the development of 26 simple but unique square compositions that are assigned to each letter of the alphabet. These images operate in the painting like a simple code, replacing each letter of the original text. The work presents itself as an abstract painting, but carries within it an algebraic echo of the syntax, grammar and formal structures of the originating armature texts.
Although the language is an integral, organizing element, the painting is primary and it is her goal that each offers enough visual pleasure to be viable and interesting on its own. The general understanding that there is a text involved in each work is important, but a viewer is not expected to decode or “read” the underlying text.
The text for Spell Bound is mined from and inspired by the sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950). There are many things to admire about Millay and her work, but Susan Peterson loves her sonnets the most.
Size: 16” x 16”
Materials: Gouache, bronzing powder and acrylic medium on board
Susan Peterson’s artwork engages with text, systems, and gridded abstraction. Each piece begins with an armature text written, edited and organized to fit, letter by letter, into a specific gridded composition. The text and the grid are provided on the back of each piece.
Color, shape, scale, and other painting concerns are an aspect of the development of 26 simple but unique square compositions that are assigned to each letter of the alphabet. These images operate in the painting like a simple code, replacing each letter of the original text. The work presents itself as an abstract painting, but carries within it an algebraic echo of the syntax, grammar and formal structures of the originating armature texts.
Although the language is an integral, organizing element, the painting is primary and it is her goal that each offers enough visual pleasure to be viable and interesting on its own. The general understanding that there is a text involved in each work is important, but a viewer is not expected to decode or “read” the underlying text.
The text for Spell Bound is mined from and inspired by the sonnets of Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950). There are many things to admire about Millay and her work, but Susan Peterson loves her sonnets the most.
Size: 16” x 16”
Materials: Gouache, bronzing powder and acrylic medium on board
