Susan Petree
“More than empowering, I find her pieces simply empowered.”
— Sandra Botnen, curator
“Every move I make is reaction to the last move. There is a lot of depth, history and texture in my work because of all the different efforts I have put into the painting,”
For Susan Petree, painting is her second act. While on vacation in Santa Fe, she came across a painting studio offering classes in abstract expressionist style painting, she gave it a try and found a new calling. Next, she went home, left her career in finance and built a painting studio in Newport, Rhode Island. She has now been painting full time for nine years. “Leap and the net will appear” are written across her website like the words are her autobiography.
“Painting was very physical at first, I just started throwing and moving paint around the canvass, and I loved it,” she says. She went on to study many more styles of painting, continuing to improve her craft, but other techniques began to erode her passion for building big bold canvasses worked over by multiple layers of paint and personal expression.
She likes the physicality of painting large canvasses and making strong statements but was reticent about making marks at first. With time she came to enjoy making strong angry marks, vibrant marks and marks of any kind. “Sometimes I get carried away and feel I have to cover up a part of my painting,” she says. Photo documenting is part of Petree’s practice, allowing her to see how the canvass evolve over time. “Sometimes I look back and see something I painted over and really regret it,” she says. As I listen, I hear in Susan’s voice how she dances with the work, making impulsive decisions, working with emotions and momentum to keep the dance and painting alive.
We went on to talk a little bit about the history of abstract expressionism as a post war artistic movement and how she believes her works of contemporary abstraction bear any similarity to the artistic movement of the past that remains so visually compelling today. “I don’t have any political intentions when I create my work,” she says. Her dance with the canvass seems more guided by intuitive movements. “Every move I make is reaction to the last move. There is a lot of depth, history and texture in my work because of all the different efforts I have put into the painting,” she says.
“Oh. And I love to travel,” she adds. Growing up in a Foreign Service family, she spent her childhood moving between Virginia, Japan, and Ethiopia. Today she makes a point of taking two big trips a year and is now looking forward to a residency she has been awarded in Loire Valley in France once the Covid-19 related travel restrictions are lifted. Her paintings are most often influenced by the places she visits. This year, without such travel, she notices lots of blues and turquoise in her paintings which she attributes to the water surrounding her in Rhode Island.
This past year has changed her painting in other ways too. She has been more introspective, asking herself not only what kind of artist she wants to be, but what kind of person she wants to be. When a work sells, she says she is not inclined to make more work like it. She remains in the moment with her artistic process, and avoids thinking about production.
Finally, what draws me to Susan Petree’s work is her unabashedly assertive style, unburdened by a need to soften or be muted. A rough quality actually speaks of clarity and mindfulness as if the painting is the way the painting is, because it is exactly the way the painting wants to be. As a woman, I appreciate the unapologetic work of another woman, less concerned with seeking and more concerned with finding. More than empowering, I find her pieces simply empowered.