An Artist's Refuge
"Oswald! Get back over here!" blew
in the breeze as a miniature dog
nipped at my frayed khaki bottoms.
I followed the gentle voice along a
concrete walkway, and struggled to make
my way to the door due to Oswald's ferocious
leg lock he had cleverly maneuvered
in a way that only a canine knew how.
Finally, after much negotiation with my
new friend, I was able to clumsily limp my
way to the kind voice of Susan Petryszak
and meet the smile behind the art that I
have heard so much about.
After a brief introduction we began to walk down the road with Oswald in tow, towards a quaint but serene pond that looked as if it had flowed right out of the pages of a Mark Twain short story. "This is the Zen part of my home," says Susan with a smile as the koi battled at the surface for their afternoon meal. "It's where I come to get away from the studio and reflect." At that immediate moment I knew. For Susan, art isn't about work nor is it a hobby; for Susan, it's all about passion and everything else is a mere color on her palette of life.
Most individuals succumb to the pressures of society and conform to what some see as safety nets, occupations that are viewed as safe and conservative. However, a select few see past the smoke and mirrors and take a rockier, less suitable route to follow a passion. Some make it; some give in to the thought of not being successful in the eyes of society.
What turns a hobby into a passion is the ability to see through the fear and chase a dream that is viewable to only the eye of the beholder. This risk was something that Susan didn't see as being chancy. For her, it was about not giving in to the anxiety of mediocrity and daring to be great. For most individuals, after graduating Magna Cum Laude with a biology and general science degree, it would be unthinkable to follow a passion or even a mere hobby back to the classroom in hopes of tackling a new set of challenges to obtain that long sought after dream.
"I've always wanted to be an artist," Susan says as we walk back towards her studio, "but it's so difficult to make a living. In the beginning I was very practical; I used my degree and taught at a public school. After the kids were born I stayed at home for a few years and then after quite some time, I finally started to pick up the brush again as a hobby; that's when lightning struck. Everything just came so easy. I started taking classes here and there and they would ask, 'How long have you been doing this?' and I would say 'Well.not really ever.'"
Twelve years after receiving her diploma at Marshall University, Susan was back. "My passion began early, I painted a little in high school but it led to being engulfed in the arts. So I thought somewhere along the line that if I could go back to school, not intending to get another degree in painting but just to know more about the arts, then that would be perfect." Four years later she walked again at graduation but this time with a master's degree in painting. "Whenever I went back and started, the whole point was to be a painter, but I knew it would be difficult. That's true with any of the arts; the hardest part of being a working artist is having the discipline to do it when nothing else is happening. No one is calling you, no one wants to see you and you get absolutely no respect when you say 'I'm an artist.'"
It wasn't mere respect that brought Susan to the studio; it was that nipping at her leg in the shape of drive and self gratification. "When you are a professional artist you go to the studio every day regardless of how you feel-inspired or not. Some days the painting goes well, then other days it drives me crazy just like any other job. There are long, dry periods in my studio life where nothing seems to be happening in the paintings. These periods require a furious, stubborn tenacity to hold on to an idea that isn't materializing in paint. Thankfully, the magic comes back and I remember why I paint."
Even though Susan decided to trade in the classroom for full time studio work, that didn't stop her from fulfilling her love of teaching. "I taught art at Marshall University and now I'm teaching yoga for the university. The shift from teaching art to yoga came about from a New Year's resolution several years ago. "I always wanted to try yoga, I trusted my instincts more at this point, so I went and took a class. That was another time that lightning struck."
As we make our way to the studio, Oswald hops up the stairs right on cue; he knows that it's time to lay the brush to canvas once again. "I have to clean this studio, it is a wreck," says Susan with a smile, "but it is a great space." When the door opens the light illuminates several colorful canvases that hold the work of countless hours of thought and passion. Beneath one window frame is a beautiful array of colors and on one wall is a shelf full of art history books and literary pieces of the past. Like most of Susan's pieces, this artistic space just fits.
"My husband and I built this house eight years ago and I was making art then; it was built with the idea of exhibiting my work. I thought, 'they may never be exhibited anywhere else,' but they will look great in the house," she explains.
Walking past aisles of paint and easels, Susan says, "This is the holy shrine; I spend four to five hours a day up here. It may not always be putting paint to the surface but I am always thinking about it. I was recently in Italy for 12 days and by day four, it's terrible but I didn't actually miss my family, my dogs or my house but I missed my studio. I missed the ability to come up here and have the space to work and sort out the visual ideas that the Italian artists so abundantly inspired."
We follow the brilliant light shining through the window pane to a fragile pile of papers. "These are part of the Femme Fatale series, The Fatal Woman. It started out with a reference to art history but is has evolved into a celebration of women. They started out as very small drawings. I used this beautiful ink and I found this Asian paper that allows for little control of the inks. I discovered the paper in Chicago in a Japanese paper store. I love Asian art, I exhibited in Japan several years ago and I love the whole Asian space and sensibility. I started drawing realistic images of roses but the materials I had selected were pretty uncontrollable, so the realistic rose quickly disappeared, replaced by more abstracted floral images. The ink runs and bleeds, giving each drawing a distinct personality. I have to react to whatever happens with the ink-it's sort of like jazz. The hardest part is knowing when to stop."
These drawings emphasize the inherent beauty of the inks and paper. "It was so rewarding, I had 12 pieces exhibited together and people got it! They would go up and apply a persona to these figurative roses. The amazing thing was that I could tell a lot about the personalities of the women who bought them."
While standing back in awe of a towering rose, now grown up from a tiny drawing to a life size oil painting, it's hard to not look at the canvas with the mindset that this is a piece of art, but also a human-size figure with more feeling and emotions than the average individual.
In the corner of my eye, I couldn't help but stare at one of Susan's large water and sky oil paintings, a piece that was so intriguing that it completely commanded my attention. "This is my latest one, this is Lost Horizons. In this one you can really see the move from a quiet horizon line to the turbulence of falling of water. This painting really demonstrates the beautiful colors achieved by the method of 'glazing' oils and then scraping through to show part of the under layers. I hope that the viewer participates in the space of this painting particularly in the tension of the moment that is so inherent in the nature of waves. I just finished it before I left for Italy."
Susan has galleries that exhibit her work in Columbus, Ohio and Boca Raton, Florida. The McJunkin Gallery represents her locally. But none of these galleries are as personal or as close to her heart as her gallery in Scott Depot, which is in her home, just past her kitchen.
"For me it's great to have them all hung in one space during a show, then I can see how well they work," says Susan. "I want my work to own and command a space. How the paintings look in the studio is always very different from how they 'hang' in my home. Many paintings get sent back to the studio for some 'tune ups.' You know how when you walk into a room a couple of people always stand out in a crowd? That's the kind of presence I want my paintings to have-a very demanding goal that seems never to be satisfied."
Right now, pieces from the Between series presently own her home gallery and are commanding more than just a sense of presence but appreciation as well. "These are part of an ongoing series. In this body of work I play with the horizon line-that illusionary line that separates the water and the sky. I've always been fascinated with space-pictorial space. I rediscovered the magical quality of a horizon line and I love the water and the whole, 'how do you paint that?' dilemma, because there's nothing 'solid' there. This simple line divides and changes a blank surface into sublime elemental realms of atmosphere. I've studied the physics of optics and the chemistry of paint in order to become familiar and comfortable with the science I need in order to achieve the visual effects that can't be accomplished by squeezing paint out of a tube."
Throughout the afternoon, I viewed a variety of Susan's projects. From her gentle and savage Femme Fatale series to the water and sky series's brilliance, it has puzzled me how an artist can find such inspiration and creativity in such diverse pieces of art. Susan says it's simple, "I start painting and somewhere along the way the painting starts to tell me where it wants to go. I have to stay open and respond. My paintings are very fluid, they shift constantly. Once the painting starts moving along I'll sit down, maybe see something and enhance it changing the entire composition.it's like being swept along with a current: I never know where the painting will end up. This is why I keep painting-I have never reached an end. The last painting simply flows into the next one."
