Susan Pasquarelli

Making art has always provided a means for spiritual regeneration. It encourages me to live and work in tune with the energies of nature. With each medium, I select a process involving gradual change. This allows for chance to be fundamental to the finished visual image. As a painting develops, the careful practice I follow allows for a welcome detachment that also gives me a sense of freedom to observe the piece as it slowly takes shape. I am a working artist, and I integrate my daily life with the discipline of painting and drawing. Regular work habits help to keep me open to receiving and exploring ideas. I believe that making art can be a way to manifest aspects of nature that are often beyond the merely perceptual or decorative. My paintings are not literal compositions of landscapes with trees and sky, although throughout, there are schematic signs that point to these themes. I think of my work as reflecting nature, a part of the process of nature in its various forms. As the art historian Anada Coomaraswamy writes: “Like nature, not in appearance, but in its manner of operation.” My intention is to make a personal vision that communicates universally. I hope to produce visual images that resonate with an engaging presence.

Born and raised in southern California, Susan received her BA in Art History from the University of California, Berkeley. In the 1970s, she moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she commuted to graduate school at Brooklyn College in New York. It was there that she studied drawing and painting with Lee Bontecou, Phillip Pearlstein, Lois Dodd, and Alan D’Arcangelo, among others. After receiving her MFA in 1982, she began showing her work regularly as well as teaching drawing and painting for twenty years at various colleges in the Philadelphia region, including fourteen years at Philadelphia University. Shortly after moving to Taos, New Mexico, from Philadelphia in 2004, Susan was awarded a three-month residency at the Harwood Museum of Art (January-April 2005). Her work has been shown in museums and galleries throughout the U.S.—including twenty solo exhibitions in New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Washington, DC—and her work is held in numerous public and private collections. She has also received several fellowships and awards, including three first-place prizes in competitions in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland, and a Visual Arts Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Kay Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico currently represents her.

2-D, Painting (all materials)