Susan Marx

About Artist:

SUSAN MARX Abstract Impressionist - A Painter Who Loves Color Artist Statement: My art comes from my radical amazement at the visual world around me, and my need to turn that experience into paint. Nature is my starting point, but not my end result. I observe nature very carefully and respond spontaneously to what I see and feel. I think of painting as drawing in color, relating warm and cool with each expressive paint-filled brushstroke, my personal handwriting. I call myself a modern Abstract Impressionist. I paint outside, en plein air, which lets me to truly experience and feel the landscape I am painting. And as I work, I abstract what is in front of me to turn it into something of my own. Working with acrylics allows me to record my color impressions quickly with immediacy. I am a painter who loves color. I see color everywhere. I do not paint flowers to paint flowers, I paint flowers to paint color. I am drawn to a specific spot for some indefinable reason. And look and look and look. Something catches my eye; I load up my palette, pick up a brush, holding it as a conductor would hold his baton, and begin. At that point, I don’t speak to the canvas, instead the canvas speaks to me. My feet are barefoot feeling the grass; I smell the air and the flowers in front of me. I am transported. I paint but lose the concept of time. Fast, faster, passionately painting, furiously painting. I cannot get the colors down fast enough. Then suddenly I need air. I stop and step back to look at my canvas one last time. The painting is done. I try to capture the essence in my painting, the color and the emotion, and leave the rest to the viewer’s imagination, to bring him into the painting. Someone once said I work to the muse of Monet, Van Gogh and Joan Mitchell (who was not a plein air painter, but captured the essence of nature); I was thrilled. They helped guide me to develop my own personal visual statement and style, my own visual expression, to become the artist I am today.

About Artwork:

My radical amazement at the beauty of the world around me and my need to put it on canvas. This is one of my floral paintings.