Susan Vecsey

Artist Statement
As a painter, I’m interested in creating iconic and universal imagery. I begin by using shapes found in nature, discovered through drawing in charcoal from direct observation. Landscape is a starting point, a vehicle to painting, like a figure or room interior. When I’m working I think a lot about freedom and restraint, in color and composition. With a blank canvas you are free to create anything, but your source material, in this case the landscape, is the constraint and a parameter. I consider many compositions, decide on the correct scale for each painting, and execute elaborate color studies to discover four or five colors that will lock together. Many emotions can be conveyed through color, form and shape. I work with the painting flat on the floor, without drawing marks, without brushes, and instead pour or let gravity move the paint, or by dripping and moving the paint with a palette knife. I work in very thin layers in order to maintain the beautiful and rough surface of the linen. Like a watercolorist, it’s not possible to make corrections: with poured paint, timing is everything and it’s important to be decisive with it and to accept or reject the unexpected.

Susan Vecsey
Untitled (Blue Nocturne), 2019
Oil on Collaged Linen
30 x 24 inches

Susan Vecsey
Untitled (Lavender / Green), 2019
Oil on Linen
46 x 52 inches

Biography
Susan Vecsey was born in New Jersey and currently lives and works in both New York City and East Hampton, New York. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, and her Master of Fine Arts from the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, studying under Graham Nickson. In 2012, Vecsey was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome. In 2017, Susan Vecsey had a solo museum exhibition at the Greenville County Museum in South Carolina, featuring numerous large-scale paintings and a catalog with an essay by Phyllis Tuchman. That same year, the John Jermain Memorial Library, Sag Harbor, New York, presented another solo exhibition of Vecsey’s paintings and works on paper. In reference to Vecsey’s 2014 show at Berry Campbell Gallery, New York, Franklin Einspruch declared in Artcritical, “this is virtuoso painting.” Vecsey’s work was featured in Guild Hall Museum’s 2014 Selections from the Permanent Collection curated by Museum Director/Chief Curator, Christina Strassfield. She has collaborated with numerous architects and designers, including Mabley Handler Design, Water Mill, New York, and Daniel Kahan, Smith and Moore Architects, Palm Beach, Florida. In recent years, the distinguished design dealers, Lee Jofa and Brunschwig & Fils, have used several of her paintings in advertising campaigns. Vecsey has been featured in magazines such as Architectural Digest, Hamptons Magazine, and Veranda. Vecsey is represented by Berry Campbell Gallery in New York. Vecsey is widely held in both public and private collections including the Greenville County Museum of Art, South Carolina and Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton. Vecsey will have her next solo exhibition at Berry Campbell Gallery, 530 West 24th Street, NYC, on July 9 – August 12, 2020.