NEW PAINTINGS AND WORKS ON PAPER
an online exhibition
Susan Jane Walp - Recent Paintings and Works on Paper
an online viewing room, enter here
Susan Jane Walp
Susan Jane Walp
Susan Jane Walp's studio, Vermont, August 2020
For over twenty years Susan Jane Walp has been painting small still lifes in her studio up in Vermont while the worlds of art, politics, and commerce have roiled on. Still life may have been the genre bearing Cubism into the world and the realm of genius for Chardin and Cezanne, but it is still a genre, seemingly more preoccupied with its own laws and unfolding than in the great events of the day. This, at least, has been the argument for the hierarchical ranking of genres of the last 2500 years, which placed religious and history painting near the top and still life at the bottom. And yet, within its population of enduring domestic and utilitarian forms, still life painting finds itself constantly in touch with the deep stuctures of its own present, and open to the very thing we want from a painter: the temperament of her touch and color which becomes her presence in a room, a being with whom we would choose to have a mental conversation. Walp is an artist of just such a penetrating intelligence. To look at her work is to have a conversation about the full history of painting up through the perceptual innovations of Modernism, and to find illumination in the realization that all the theory or historical imperative at one's command still needs to be animated, or "charmed," by sensibility. As a material awareness this is an intimate experience, one naturally suited to the physical scale of Walp's painting, where we are invited to come close.
from Come Close by Stephen Westfall
Recent paintings and works on paper
Susan Jane Walp
Blueberries in a Green Dish with Cork and Knife, 2020
oil on linen
10 5/8 x 11 3/8 inches
(27 x 28.7 cm)
Susan Jane Walp
Pummelo on Black Plate with Cork and Red-Handled Knife, 2020
oil on linen
11 1/8 x 11 1/8 inches
(28.3 x 28.3 cm)
Susan Jane Walp
Three Eggs in a Tin Bowl with Knife, Cork and Black Ribbon, 2020
oil on linen
11 1/8 x 11 5/8 inches
(28.3 x 29.5 cm)
Susan Jane Walp
Blueberries in a Green Basket with Red-handled Knife, 2020
oil on linen
9 x 9 1/4 inches
(25.3 x 25.7 cm)
Susan Jane Walp
Pummelo with Knife, Dark Tulip and Cork (Saint), 2012-2020
oil on linen
11 3/8 x 11 1/8 inches
(28.9 x 28.3 cm)
When I go into the studio, for many years now, the first things I do is sit— I do a short meditation— and then say a kind of prayer, that the activity that I’m about to engage in may somehow be a practice in calming and focusing the mind and finding a more open awareness. And that these qualities with a bit of luck may manifest in the work itself and go out into the world and be of some benefit to others.
from an interview in Motifs, Masters, and Metaphysics: Susan Jane Walp’s Still Life(s) by Bill Barrette
When I go into the studio, for many years now, the first things I do is sit— I do a short meditation— and then say a kind of prayer, that the activity that I’m about to engage in may somehow be a practice in calming and focusing the mind and finding a more open awareness. And that these qualities with a bit of luck may manifest in the work itself and go out into the world and be of some benefit to others.
from an interview in Motifs, Masters, and Metaphysics: Susan Jane Walp’s Still Life(s) by Bill Barrette
Susan Jane Walp, from the early 1970s, Denver, CO
from the Black Book Notebooks I-X
an ongoing series (2014 - present)
The artist at home, Vermont, August 2020
Photographs nos. 1, 2, 3 and 5 by John Douglas, 2020
Photograph no. 4 by Chuck Greene, 1974
Susan Jane Walp graduated from Mount Holyoke College and continued her studies at the New York Studio School, Skowhegan and Brooklyn College’s MFA Program. She has been awarded Fellowships in Painting from the Guggenheim and Bogliasco Foundations. In 2017 she was Artist-in-Residence at Dartmouth College. Her last solo exhibition at Tibor de Nagy Gallery was in 2019 and she was recently included in (Nothing But) Flowers at Karma, New York.