Susan Stillman: A Second of Illumination

Susan Stillman received the Acrylic Award in Jackson’s Artwork Prize this 12 months together with her work Tangled. On this interview, she discusses engaged on 10 or extra work without delay, dwelling a well-rounded life as an artist, and returning to the identical topics time and again with recent eyes.

Above picture: Studio portrait with October/Alexander

Tangled, 2024
Susan Stillman
Acrylic on canvas, 152 x 112 cm | 59.8 x 44 in

Josephine: Might you inform us about your inventive background?

Susan: So far as I can keep in mind, I’ve at all times considered myself as an artist. I studied anatomy as a 15-year-old with the grasp, Stephen Rogers Peck, and went on later to check with Robert Beverly Hale on the Arts College students League. Determine Drawing was my old flame, and I nonetheless return to it to recharge and reengage my observational expertise.

My highschool artwork instructor, Dorrit Woolf, was answerable for my going to the Rhode Island Faculty of Design for my BFA. After attending their summer season program at age 16, I used to be positive it was the place for me. I selected Illustration as a serious as a result of it supplied a rigorous basis in drawing, and I additionally noticed a path ahead in supporting myself with my work.

Probably the most influential expertise from RISD was my junior 12 months overseas in Rome with the European Honors Program. It was a seminal expertise for me, seeing artwork in situ the place it was designed to be seen. Artwork is woven into the material of on a regular basis life there and Italy grew to become my religious residence.

After I graduated, I moved to New York Metropolis to pursue a profession as a contract illustrator. I supported myself on this approach for about 10-15 years. A few of my most memorable jobs had been illustrating a boxed, centennial version of Joyce’s Ulysses, working with the creator, Pete Hamill, for instance his ebook, Invisible Metropolis: A New York Sketchbook, and common assignments for New York Journal and The New York Occasions.

I at all times beloved the dynamic of the classroom, and since I began educating part-time at Parsons Faculty of Design quickly after graduating, I’ve basically by no means left. Instructing has been a calling for me, by no means only a day job. The group of proficient colleagues and my great college students proceed to encourage and enrich my life and work.

I used to be at all times doing my very own private work between jobs, and in my early 30s, I took my MFA in portray at Brooklyn Faculty, the place the school was principally made up of figurative artists. I studied with Lennart Anderson, Lois Dodd, and Philip Pearlstein, and I lastly tackled portray, studying to see and blend color. This was the place I started my curiosity within the panorama. A driving journey within the UK was the supply of my first physique of labor. I used to be Fairfield Porter, Hopper, Diebenkorn, Jane Freilicher, and Wolf Kahn. I fell in love with the research of sunshine and color, pure kind and abstraction.

At the moment, I grew to become very allergic to oil-based paints and began my lengthy relationship with acrylic. I additionally began a fee enterprise associated to my private work known as ‘Residence Portraits’. This helped assist me for the subsequent 30 years whereas I continued to pursue my private portray after I had the time. Since 2020, I’ve been in a position to focus solely by myself work.

Studio view

Josephine: What does a typical working day within the studio appear like for you? Do you will have any necessary routines or rituals?

Susan: My studio is within the attic of my residence, so I’ve lots of flexibility in my day. I’ve a busy life, and I’m used to working in concentrated spurts of time. There are weeks when I’m principally stretching and getting ready panels and canvases to be on the prepared. There are weeks when I’m beginning many work without delay, leaving them unfinished for lengthy durations to get far and perspective. The beginnings are my favourite a part of the method. Then, there are the weeks after I decide these again up and try to finish them with out dropping the spontaneity of the preliminary impulse. That’s the toughest half.

Work in Progress, Purple Glow, 2025
Susan Stillman
Acrylic on canvas, 163 x 117 cm | 64 x 46 in

Josephine: Which supplies or instruments might you not reside with out?

Susan: I’ve realized many methods to make working in acrylic simpler. My Masterson Palette is used to retailer my paint, typically for weeks. Holding it within the fridge helps extend its freshness. A sprig bottle of distilled water retains the paint from drying and getting mouldy as I’m working. I purchase lots of freezer paper to make use of for mixing color, taping it to the pullout drawer on my worktable. I’ve used the identical restricted palette of colors for a few years, which has compelled me to discover ways to combine nearly each color I would like with out having to waste cash on pointless tubes of paint.

Portray palette, acrylic

Josephine: Do you’re employed from a reference? What’s your course of?

Susan: I work in my studio and never from direct remark, so I depend on an intensive archive of photographs that I’m always taking pictures with my iPhone. I view these on the iPad I preserve beside my easel, which is a lot simpler and cheaper than the years we needed to make massive prints to work from. These photos jog my reminiscence and provides me a place to begin to mine the factor that captured my curiosity in that exact second. I don’t really feel ‘married’ to the photographs however use them as wanted for data and construction. It’s been a few years since I labored plein air, and the fugitive high quality of the altering mild makes the photograph’s instantaneous seize the right methodology for my wants.

Portray wall, work in progress

Josephine: Do you repeatedly draw or preserve a sketchbook? If that’s the case, how does this inform your work?

Susan: I stored sketchbooks for a few years, utilizing them for observational drawing and as a kind of diary for ideas and concepts. I take advantage of them much less nowadays. My work don’t begin with drawings however are labored out on the canvas roughly with vine charcoal, as I initially cowl the floor with massive and shortly painted color shapes.

I proceed to fill many sketchbooks with determine research that I draw after I’m educating, and by myself throughout classes with fashions.

Interwoven/St Ives UK, 2024
Susan Stillman
Acrylic on canvas, 152 x 112 cm | 60 x 44 in

Josephine: Have you ever ever had a interval of stagnation in creativity? If that’s the case, what helped you overcome it?

Susan: Not a lot a interval of stagnation, as durations of time away from the studio. It may very well be household time, schoolwork, or getting ready for reveals. Even after I’m not at work, I’m at all times conscious and observant, searching for imagery and eager about the work.

It’s at all times tough to reenter the studio and discover that focus wanted to proceed portray. I often spend the primary day again puttering, cleansing up, and getting issues prepared. By day two, I’ve picked up a portray in progress and might really feel myself sliding again into the groove. I work on as many as 10 or extra work at a time, visiting one for a bit earlier than placing it away once more after I’m not sure what to do subsequent. Far is essential in my course of, with a purpose of distilling the content material to take care of the vitality of the primary lay-in.

Attic studio view

Josephine: Are there any particular artists or mentors who’ve impressed you?

Susan: Recently, I’ve been eager about Giorgio Morandi and the intimacy gained from repeatedly revisiting the identical topics in numerous configurations. With my sequence, ‘Peripheral Visions’, I’m discovering that intimacy in my very own environment. I revisit these motifs and try to see them anew every time, with the heightened consciousness of a traveller in a wierd panorama.

I keep in mind studying Ann Truitt’s trilogy, Daybook, Flip, Prospect, as a younger lady. These journals chronicled her journey as an artist and a girl, balancing her inventive work and household. The books lit a pathway for my very own experiences and gave me confidence that I might take pleasure in the identical well-rounded life as a positive artist.

Library element

Josephine: What had been you eager about or exploring on the time you painted Tangled? What impressed it, and the way did it come to be?

Susan: Whereas I started portray with massive canvases a few years in the past, it’s the small ones which have helped me to let go. I attempt to retain the openness of the second and never describe an excessive amount of element.

The portray that was shortlisted for the Jackson’s Artwork Prize in 2024, Walkway Over the Hudson, was a transitional portray for me. It introduced the vitality realized from my small Peripheral Visions panels right into a extra formidable scale. Tangled is one other step in that course, utilizing the excessive viewpoint I’m so drawn to and referencing a well-recognized scene that I see repeatedly in all seasons and occasions of day. My daughter and son-in-law’s residence has a spectacular view from their image window on the fifth flooring. I acknowledge the affect of Vuillard’s Place Vintimille, and all of the artists who’ve been influenced by the aerial perspective of Japanese prints. There are numerous extra work coming from this topic. I have already got its companion began.

Walkway Over the Hudson, 2018
Susan Stillman
Acrylic on canvas, 163 x 117 cm | 64 x 46 in

Josephine: Why did this piece really feel like the fitting one to submit?

Susan: Jackson’s Artwork Prize is likely one of the few open calls that permits large-scale works to be submitted. I took the chance to enter a extra formidable canvas due to that freedom. Tangled additionally represents the present course of my work, an exploration of sunshine and time expressed via a dynamic vary of parts.

Studio view, works in progress

Josephine: How did it really feel to grasp you had received the Acrylic Award?

Susan: I used to be so excited to observe because the completely different phases had been rolled out! The variety of entries and the top quality of labor make this competitors particularly vital within the panorama of open calls. I used to be thrilled and honoured to be shortlisted once more, after which to get the Supplies Award! I acquired the e-mail telling me in regards to the award within the morning, and that afternoon, I received phrase that I’d received the Distinguished Instructing Award at The New Faculty/Parsons Faculty of Design, the place I’ve been a school member for 42 years. It was a stellar day and essentially the most outstanding validation for my life selections as each an artist and an educator.

Studio nonetheless life

Josephine: How do you consider scale in your work, and the way does it affect the best way you body a scene or information the viewer’s expertise?

Susan: The size of the work has an influence on how the pictures are perceived, as bigger work invite the viewer to enter the house created, and smaller-scale work feels fragmentary, echoing my experiences of shifting via the panorama and noticing flashes of color on the periphery.

Work in progress

Josephine: How has your relationship to your each day routines, on a regular basis environments and observations knowledgeable the event of your work each conceptually and visually?

Susan: The panorama I see day by day shapes my work. It’s a basis from which to discover the relationships between the pure to the man-made architectural parts. The views from my home windows excessive on the hill, and my each day walks in all seasons, feed my preoccupation with mild and the best way it impacts change in color and tonalities. The simplicity of the topic is reworked by the second of illumination and by our sudden consideration. Most of the motifs I’ve painted have been revisited repeatedly in numerous occasions of day, seasons, climate, and in numerous scales. My best takeaway from this intense and intimate research is that each second is solely distinctive, and repetition solely enhances this understanding.

Attic studio/workplace

Josephine: Are there any new supplies or concepts you’re excited to discover utilizing your prize?

Susan: I’ve sufficient paint right here to hold via a few years! I’ve added a number of colors to my chosen palette, however I preserve issues simple through the use of only a heat and funky model of every hue, forcing me to grasp the parts of color and reproduce them with out counting on too many selections.

Studio portrait with Tangled

Josephine: What’s arising subsequent for you?

Susan: I’m excited to get again into the studio. It’s been a fruitful and busy summer season displaying my work, however the portray beginnings I left for myself are calling, like crumbs within the forest to assist me discover my approach again. I can’t wait to interrupt open the brand new paint!

Observe Susan on Instagram

Go to Susan’s web site