Essay for Susan Rand November 2, 2021

Susan Rand’s new work is an important figurative series depicting universal themes of interpersonal relationships rendered by an artist who keenly observes and intuits human dynamics.

In reductive environments, painted in Rand’s signature use of rich color and loose brushwork, anonymous human forms are interjected and portray themes of joy, inclusion, fear and longing.

These canvases and panels have been worked up, scraped down and left to reveal the renderings of an artist fully conversant in and enjoying her medium’s abilities. The surfaces seem to jump and play while supporting the new narrative of figures, sometimes solid, sometimes dissolving, in relationships that conjure at once carefree delight and anxious contemplation.

In Mother and Child, where a protective mother and her child venture into a watery world, prepared for its consequences, a fully clothed on-looker cannot participate. Why is the on-looker not joining the duo? Why is she not subjecting herself to that foreboding blue?

Similar questions arise in Swimmers United #1. The Milton Avery-like shapes of beach, sea and sky show a young swimmer in the light blue shape ready to jump in. Will she enjoy the currents of that light blue shape or will she venture further into the dark blue where figures dissipate?

This new body of work by Susan Rand challenges the viewer to trust what she does not see and respond viscerally to the basic and complex life experiences before her.

Lee Findlay Potter October 29, 2021

2023
Standard Space, Sharon , Ct. featured artist
Fishers Island Community Center group exhibit

2021
North Elm Home Millerton, N.Y.

2018
Pandion Gallery, Fishers Island, N.Y.

2017
Pandion Gallery, Fishers Island, N.Y.

2015
The Norfolk Library

2014
Sanford Smith Fine Art, Great Barrington, Ma. featured artist
Robert Andrew Parker selected Works, Washington Art Association, Washington Depot, Ct.

2013
Sanford Smith Fine Art, Great Barrington, Ma. featured artist
Washington Art Association featured artist
Pandion Gallery Fishers Island, N.Y.
Goddard College, Plainfield Vermont solo show

2012
Tremaine Gallery , Salisbury School, Salisbury, Ct.
Eckert Fine Art, Kent, Ct.

2011
Vermont Studio Center artist grant residency
The Norfolk Library , solo show
Pandion Gallery, Fishers Island, N.Y.

2010
Tyrone Guthrie Centre residency, Co. Monahan, Ireland
The RE Institute
Art Hamptons
Art Palm Beach
Eckert Fine Art
Brick Walk Fine Art
Hotchkiss Library

2009
Brick Walk Fine Art
Palm Beach 3
Ct. Art, Now and Then, Eckert Fine Art, Kent, Ct.

2008
Eckert Fine Art, Kent , Ct.
The Norfolk Library, solo show

2007
The White Gallery, Lakeville, Ct. solo show

2006
Vermont Studio Center artist grant residency

2005
The White Gallery, Lakeville, Ct. solo show
Vermont Studio Center residency

2004
The Norfolk library, Norfolk, Ct. solo show

2003
Tremaine Gallery at Hotchkiss School
Morgan Lehman Gallery, Lakeville, Ct.

2002
Morgan Lehman Gallery, Lakeville

2001
Tremaine Gallery, The Hotchkiss School

1999
The Norfolk Library, Norfolk, Ct. solo show

1997 1998
Eckert Fine Art, Naples Florida

1974
B.F.A., Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont

In Salisbury, a Barn’s Tale

RAND HOLDS FIRST ONE-WOMAN SHOW

Written and Photographed by KATHRYN BOUGHTON

When is good not good enough? Susan Rand of Salisbury thinks she has found that answer—at least in her painting. Ms. Rand, who opens a new solo show this weekend at the Norfolk Library, has a new body of work that she feels takes her works “a step farther.”

“I feel like I’ve looked deeper into myself,” she said. “When I am painting [this series] things come out that I didn’t know were there.”

It is an opinion shared by her artistic cohorts. She tells of sending a card to a former mentor. The card bore one of her new images. “He called and asked, “Susan, when did you start to paint like that?”’ she reported with satisfaction.

The Litchfield County Time

read more…

A Meeting of Paint and Photograph

RAND HOLDS FIRST ONE-WOMAN SHOW

Written by ANNE DAY
Photographed by JUDITH PETROVICH

She says she’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, everything is going so well for Susan Skakel Rand of Salisbury. The impossibly young-looking Ms. Rand, a top seller for Elyse Harney Real Estate, has just hung her first one-woman show of “Painterly Photographs” at the Norfolk Library. Mother of three, real-estate executive and artist, Ms. Rand seems to be fulfilling all of her life’s dreams at once.

Ms. Rand chose the title for the show because the work is both photography and painting. The images some pictures of the leisure class enjoy in their leisure and some landscapes, is at once facile and complex. The postcard for the show is a triptych of young people on the beach. At first glance it is one painting, at second, it might have once been a photograph and at third, one notices the seams where the three pictures have merged. Not much is happening with the subjects, they stand posed for the camera-the movement is in the artist’s touch.

The Litchfield County Times

read more…

Opening up the Dark Places

The Art Scene: JUDITH LINSCOTT

Susan Rand’s work at the Norfolk Library shows a leap in her proression. While she painted some very painterly and moving pieces in the past, those (at least those she has chosen to show) were in the primarily safe category. They were good.

The pieces on display at Norfolk show an artist who is working less at creating a painting and more at the painting itself, exploring in a newly intense and confident way. Thus, a series of works examines the blackness of an open barn door surrounded by the green of the barn and the grass, or looks through the door into the interior of the barn; these aren’t about what is depicted as much as an exploration of form and color, of the complement of dark and light, the endless possiblilities of perspective and how it informs what we see. It’s about entrances and exits, the light we allow in and what we keep out.

Compass

read more…