Artist’s Statement
Susan S. McDonald
How is it that we ignore the essential earth around us
while professing that we love and cherish nature? These paintings explore
the relationship of a small dragonfly and the modern world around us by
covering the pattern of the dragonfly wing with geometric shapes. Yet, even
when the pattern of the wing is nearly completely covered, the texture
permeates the paint that obscures it, rendering the wing a persistent
reminder of the dragonfly.
Each painting is an overlay of two worlds. One world is of the mind,
geometric ideas and patterns, a world created by human intelligence. The
other world is natural, with biologically derived shapes and forms. Each
world tells us something new about the other. Each one both hides, and
simultaneously reveals, something new about the other. This relationship
between the natural and the human becomes the new subject.
The colors are evocative. They create a balancing of attraction and
separation, like two magnets at once of equal poles and then of unequal
poles. The image of the dragonfly wing and the geometric overlay struggle
for dominance. Though the dragonfly wing is often forced farther into the
distance, it often sneaks back into the foreground in a mysterious textural
presence that dominates the surface from beneath. “So, what is this new
subject?” you may ask. I can’t really tell you. It comes from my deep love
of all things wild, and my questions about the tyranny of modern culture. It
is expressed in the medium of paint that is my primary form of
communication. We all coexist with the dilemmas of the 21st century,
and it is the struggle between the natural world and human invention which
conflicts all of us.
