SUSANNA BLUHM
COUNTRY PAINTING WITH GHOSTS
OCTOBER 14 - NOVEMBER 11, 2023
OPENING RECEPTION - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14 2023, FROM 3-6PM
EXHIBITION TOUR WITH LELE BARNETT - SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2023, FROM 2-4PM
FIRST THURSDAY WITH THE ARTIST - THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2023 FROM 5-8PM
J. Rinehart Gallery is thrilled to announce our second solo exhibition from painter, Susanna Bluhm. Bluhm’s exhibition, Country Painting with Ghosts, continues to explore experiences the artist had in “red” states in the U.S. Bluhm’s semi abstract landscape paintings provide opportunities to have emotions, other than anger and fear, as an American.
Country Painting with Ghosts experiments with creating new environments. An individual painting can become a new place in and of itself. Sensations of things that might happen within a landscape, such as weather, touch, temperature, sex, or noise. Semi-abstract “characters” show up in the paintings and suggest meanings with their repetition and associations with each other.
Within, Country Painting with Ghosts, abstract marks interact with more recognizable shapes, and a kind of narrative ensues. Tongues want to bask in the sensual pleasure of looking and painting and eat everything up.
Of her work Bluhm states: “Making these semi-abstract landscape-based paintings with a personal narrative running underneath is a three-pronged effort. I am looking at my agency in the landscape. I am trying to spend more time in the place by painting it. I’m using paint to make physical contact again. In this intimate way, the paintings explore landscape as a lover and loved one, enmeshed with the paint, and without the safe distance usually afforded by the sublime in traditional Western landscape painting.”
Susanna Bluhm received her BA in Studio Art from Humboldt State University and her MFA in Painting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has completed residencies at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin and at the Karl Hofer Gesellschaft in Berlin. In 2014, she was the recipient of the prestigious Neddy Artist Award in Painting and has been exhibiting her work regularly since 2004. Bluhm is included in numerous private and public collections throughout the US, and abroad.
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Exhibition Statement
Country Painting with Ghosts
My paintings are usually related in some way to my physical environments and experience of them. Source material I draw from when I’m painting often includes photographs I’ve taken of places I’ve been. Also, the paintings are experiments in creating new environments. An individual painting can become a new place in itself, with sensations of things that might happen in a place, such as weather, touch, landscape, temperature, sex or noise. Abstract marks interact with more recognizable shapes, and a kind of narrative ensues.
Semi-abstract “characters” show up in the paintings and suggest meanings with their repetition and associations with each other. For example, a chunk of green and white stripes has its origins in the green and white striped pajama bottoms from Suzanne Valadon’s The Blue Room, 1923. To me, this “character” feels like a queer, feminist reclaiming of the history of painting. Tongues want to bask in the sensual pleasure of looking and painting and eat everything up.
The paintings in this show are based on experiences I had in “red” states in the U.S. Painting and landscape give me opportunities to have emotions as an American other than anger and fear.
Making these semi-abstract landscape-based paintings with a personal narrative running underneath is a three-pronged effort. I am looking at my agency in the landscape. I am trying to spend more time in the place by painting it. I’m using paint to make physical contact again. In this intimate way, the paintings explore landscape as a lover and loved one, enmeshed with the paint, and without the safe distance usually afforded by the sublime in traditional Western landscape painting.