Altitude
Susan Rosenberg’s latest paintings, with their vivid colour and movement, can easily be appreciated as direct – often joyful – evocations of the act of walking through mountain ranges at high altitudes, inspired by journeys undertaken through South Africa’s Drakensberg and Cape Mountains, the Sierra Nevada in California, the Olympics in Washington State, and the Alps and Dolomites in Europe. But, as with her previous explorations of the human body and still life, the paintings also reflect a more subtle, layered and internal striving for various forms of balance and poise.
Firstly, in the way she paints, and talks about her work, it is clear that Susan has always been fascinated by notions of beauty. She is acutely conscious of one key definition of beauty – “nothing taken away from it or added to it but for the worse” – so her work is suffused with the constant excitement, and tension, of ensuring that every brush mark or splash is a critical and necessary part of the whole. As she says: “It’s very easy for the paintings to tip over into chaos, so there is a tension in finding the moment before they fall over the edge. It is this moment that gives the thrill.”
Another of her preoccupations is finding the moment of quiet and harmony amidst vigorous effort and motion. It is interesting that this quest begins with her working practice: “Every day as I enter the studio I go through a process of shedding the world and clearing my mind to reach a point of almost abstract thought and emptiness, before I can paint.” Throughout the huge physical and mental effort required to paint large canvasses, involving movement of the whole body, she tries to draw out the interior moment of stillness. In this sense, there is a direct parallel with the strenuous exertion of walking up a mountain to attain the view, and in the silence away from the world, the mind empties and expands.
Susan’s paintings are also, of course, an attempt to make sense, and find the balance, of her personal journey. She has been deeply influenced by the philosophy underlying oriental calligraphy, whereby a lifetime of experience is expressed in a simple mark or gesture, and white space allows the colour and movement to breathe and expand. As she says: “The paintings reflect who I am, a South African in cosmopolitan London, a sum total of the places I have lived, the things I have seen.” It is therefore a mistake to view the paintings too literally; they should rather be seen as interior balances of all the journeys, all the hikes, and all the flowers.
Finally, as with all of Susan’s work, there is her unique sense of colour, as she tries to find the equilibrium between colour speaking directly to the senses, while the arrangement of the colour on the surface of the canvas requires intellect from both artist and viewer. In an age where the dominant aesthetic is concept and irony, it is refreshing to find an artist who believes in beauty and conveys pleasure and exhilaration.
- William Black, September 2008