Genuine Artists–Genuine Collectors
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The Expansive Moment
I have been painting the urban scene in an abstract manner for fifteen years. Early on I painted empty sidewalks and parking lots, transforming the mundane urban landscape with diffuse atmosphere and exaggerated color. In 2009, I began utilizing Internet traffic information as the basis for these increasingly abstracted images. What interested me most were the undifferentiated stretches of the urban Midwest with its mercurial winter weather. In these pieces, the long empty vistas and changing light evoke a degree of wistful contemplation.
Recently a move to a studio near interstate 55 in Memphis put the highways and sunset views right outside my window. The emotional impact of these deserted panoramas is more important than accurate representation. I am influenced by 19th century American landscape painting and by the Buddhist concept of groundlessness. The tension between abstraction and illusionism in my work generates something familiar and yet unknown, of this world and yet also otherworldly.
—Susan Maakestad