Five Questions for Artist Suzanna Fields
Suzanna Fields
Five Questions
Words:
Growing up in Appalachia, the strange beauty and adaptations of nature seeped into and permeate Suzanna Fields' work. Hyper-intricate paintings layer idiosyncratic forms drawn from natural structures until they become their own humid amalgamations in a suspended state of disintegration or growth. Pouring, extruding, and layering paint, ink, and mediums, she uses unconventional painting processes to reveal the variation and impermanence that make up the systems that surround us. Tactile accumulations bubble with intricate repetitions and deviations that echo the precarious density and barely-there order in the world. Mirroring both the macro and the micro, these organic forms sometimes seem to map psychologically- tinged inner landscapes, that suggests both the connectedness and strangeness of our experience. The layered work invites viewers to participate by making own connections between forms in nature, from satellite imagery to microbiology. An intermingling of contemplation and spontaneity, biology and fantasy, and humor and pathos, these saturated paintings explore the tension between the foreignness and the familiarity of the natural world and how it persistently weaves its way into subconscious experience.
Five Questions:
Interviews in Excellence with Artist
Suzanna Fields
Morphology, detail, Suzanna Fields.
1. How do you get in the right mindset to make your work? Do you have a particular strategy?
I just finished a solo show which closed midway due to Covid19. The show is a detail in the larger scheme of things. Nonetheless, studio time right after a show is already precarious. You receive input from many people about the work after having limited, input for a long time. It takes time to absorb the body of work you made (while also playing catch up in the other parts of your life.) This derails my process a bit. The longer I am out of the studio, the more self-conscious I am when I return.
So above all else my strategies are to never stay away too long and to get to the studio first thing when I am freshest. My studio is in my house, which is practical for me. On days I can't really devote to the studio, if I can make myself go there for a little while to clean up and look at work in progress it helps to recenter me. Once in the studio it is hard to pull away, but sometimes must switch gears, because, life.
On studio days I start out quiet, placing works on the wall so I can step back to look at them. Seeing the works after a break areas that need work are suddenly clear. In terms of strategy in my workflow, I have at least two works going in various stages, with one being the work I am most focused on. After establishing the initial ground and composition in the painting while the work is on the wall, I will work flat on detailed passages. Once dry, I place the work on the wall again and use painter's tape to make notations of areas I want to alter once working flat again. I alternate this back and forth process as much as I need. I also use a timer to keep myself aware of how much time has passed as I lose myself in painting. There are a few sweet spots in the drying process when I can get the paint to do certain things, so I go back to passages and add to them as they dry. I also use the timer to force myself to pause and move around, so that I can be more effective. I think people see the process of making art in an idealized way. I even romanticize the process of other artists. I am not a naturally organized, person. I have a propensity to meander and can go down a messy rabbit hole of my own sporadic tendencies. The timer makes me more productive, focused and keeps life's outside demands from creeping into the studio.
Night Vision, Suzanna Fields.
Night Vision, detail, Suzanna Fields.
2. What process do you go through in preparing for a work that you are about to make? (drawing,sketching, writing, experimenting, etc...)
I am fairly intuitive in my process, I write ideas, and make basic sketches of possibilities in my sketchbook. If I am in the middle of the body of the work that may happen fairly quickly. If I am starting new ideas that feel like a departure (like after a show) I'll look at old sketches that feel like part of my vocabulary. To that, I will add new ideas I have been saving along the way. A few key images always bubble to the top and clear away tangents. Sometimes I make tracing drawings with scraps of Mylar over old sketches and images to combine with new ones. These are a kind of visual note taking, just for me. Certain images and patterns can feed the work for a long time. There is a point where you can paralyze yourself in the planning stages. This is a tightrope. I crave a clear, delineated path yet the surprises are the most interesting part. Written on my wall is the phrase, "When you don't know how you got there." That is almost always the case with the strongest work. I start with a plan but lots of paths present themselves once the painting is underway. These are always more intricate and complex than I could have imagined. The work (the process) is smarter than me. I have amnesia about how much time went into some paintings, I think most artists probably do. You just have to start.
“Morphology”, Installation view, Quirk Gallery, Suzanna Fields.
3. How did you arrive at your current art practice? Was there a pivotal moment that got you there?
There are lots of incremental moments along the way. The accumulation of hours working builds your own artistic language. This can take a long time.
A series of events happened when I first began making art that brought me to the work I make now.
I came late to making art, in my junior year of undergrad. Right before I took my first studio art class, I took a May term Field Biology class where we hiked and identified plants all day, keeping a visual journal of various species. We also visited small pools of water at the base of a ridge filled with frog egg sacks. I still go back there 25 years later. Those eggs sacks are still visible in my work. I didn't understand it then, but that class allowed me to better understand my experiences growing up in the Appalachian mountains. The tangible, strange beauty in the natural world became very immediate unlike my experience in a typical biology class. When I graduated I lived in a cabin with a small pond in the country working on painting. I spent a lots of time outside mesmerized by everything in the way you are first out on your own as an adult. I also made these crazy encrusted sketchbooks with oil pastels and collaged everything into them including organic materials and detritus of all the animals that would find their way to (and sometimes into) the cabin; bees, birds, bats, skunks, mice, turtles, herons, possums, cats, dogs, cows, a goat! The woman who owned the cabin said I lived in a Pippi Longstocking book. I didn't see the sketchbooks as my "real" art at the time, just something I was compelled to do. Of course, those books were the most interesting thing I made then and directly connect to the work I make now. It took a few more years for me to trust myself enough and to understand how to let those connections form and surface in my work. In retrospect, those oddball encounters with nature are all in my work.
Another moment: I was making figure paintings when I went to grad school a short time later. I was enamored with abstraction but I hadn't found a way into making abstract paintings that felt right for me. I took a fiber craft class, and our final project could be from any material. I made a work from translucent gumdrops and bright sewing straight pins, based on a memory of my mom eating candy while quilting. I was able to translate abstraction into something that combined my formal art interests with personal experience, so it felt like my own language (so were the earlier sketchbooks, but I couldn't see that yet.). Also, the translucent candy was very Pop, yet was those frog eggs sack too. at the same time. That was the first time I was able to realize that kind of dualism and tension co-existing in a work. Soon after my fellow grad student and I took a road trip throughout the west. I had never been, and the landscape stunned me. As soon as we came back I started making poured paintings with translucent mediums and extruding my mom's craft paint with a squeeze bottle. This opened up my process and gave me a path into abstraction (and installations with paint) that had a sense of humor, play and connection.
4. How do you manage all of the other stuff artists have to do, besides the artwork? Do you have a particular system for this?
I intend one morning a week to be a time to work on art-related things. The pull to make the work often wins out though. Like a lot of people, I do admin things when I have a deadline. It's a weird part of being an artist that you feel guilty when not making work. Most people give themselves a high five for finishing to-do lists. I feel that too, but a mild sense of remorse at not being in the studio hovers nearby.
Morphology, Suzanna Fields.
Morphology, detail, Suzanna Fields.
5. What inspires you in the world outside of your work and studio?
Natural systems and how they surprise us with their messiness, fragility or persistence. (Present day pandemic for example.)
The utter strangeness of the natural world. Stare at a jellyfish or a praying mantis for a full minute. Or lichen in your backyard, or a cauliflower in your refrigerator.
The dualism in our relationship with nature: the sense of otherness we feel about the natural world vs. how embedded it is in our day-to-day well being and psyche. It's the timeless idea of the sublime in art and it's contained in something as small as a microorganism.
And One More:
Do you have any advice to give artists that you would like to share?
Social media can make it seem like everyone is just busy in their studios, making away. During this crazy time I think it is okay if you are a little at loose ends. It takes a while to process all that is happening and for it to emerge through your work. We are all collectively learning a lot about ourselves with the momentum and busyness of life upended. Keep reminding yourself that while the world is impatient, art is a long game.
Siphon, Suzanna Fields.
About:
Fields is the recipient of a Bethesda Painting Award and a finalist for the Trawick Prize as well as a fellow at the Studios at Key West and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her work is in private and public collections including the Eleanor Wilson Museum at Hollins University, Capital One, Philip Morris, U.S.A., Retail Data, LLC, Kathie and Stephen Markel, Bill and Pam Royall, and Shepard and Amanda Fairey. Exhibitions include the Weatherspoon Museum of Art, Greensboro, NC, The Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke VA, the Laurel Rogers Museum of Art Laurel, MS, the University of Southern Mississippi Museum of Art, Hattiesburg, MS, Hollins University, Roanoke, VA, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA, Irvine Contemporary, Washington DC, and the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Virginia Beach, VA. Raised in Abingdon, Virginia, Fields now resides in Richmond, VA.
Studio View, Work in Progress, “Stars burn clear all night till dawn, do that yourself” 2019.
Night Vision, detail, Suzanna Fields.
