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We begin a long walk together with American painter Susan Stillman, surrounded by her works filled with a thousand shades of color, all the hues that nature offers us through the changing seasons.
These are strolls that start with her Peripheral Visions, small-scale works that capture fleeting moments along the road, vibrating with life and color.
It’s as if we can hear her voice while we step into these “peripheral visions.” As we walk briskly, Susan tells us about her work:
“They are my visions: fragments of visions I catch during my walks, when it feels like nothing escapes me. Colors, sounds, the wind blowing through the leaves… I try to express, in my painting, everything I feel deeply inside.”
A sunlit house brings us back to a spring day where light dances on the green around it; the coral red of autumn highlights the navy blue of a house glimpsed in passing as we enjoy the crisp fall air. Then winter arrives suddenly, catching us in the cold and every now and then, we stop to admire that blanket of snow that draws us in like children again.
We slip quietly into other paintings: quick, energetic brushstrokes, bursting with color, sensitivity, and a desire to revel in the beauty of nature that endlessly fascinates Susan. Brushstrokes layered one upon another, filling the canvas so completely that it disappears — becoming a silent space for new visions to emerge.
We step into her Large Paintings and are struck by Walkway over the Hudson (selected for the Jackson’s Art Prize 2024) where it feels as though we’re flying above colorful, tilted houses, or perhaps precariously balancing on that very bridge over the Hudson River, imagining its thousand hues, from steel grey to deep blue.
Where will that uphill grey road lead us, beneath a blue sky and brightly colored trees of an early autumn still touched by summer’s warmth? Yet soon the wind will come, and those leaves will vanish. A large acrylic painting that opens a window onto the world where Susan walks through, always curious, always observing, always admiring nature and its transformations.
And how could we resist stepping into Red Glow, that tiny bright red house nestled among towering trees that seem to lean over it, to rest or perhaps to protect it?
The cool tones of winter reflect on walls and tree branches, shifting from blue-grey to icy turquoise, shades that hint at a coming snowfall. We’re looking at Tangled, which won this year’s Acrylic Award at the Jackson’s Art Prize.
“The landscape I see every day shapes my work. It’s a foundation from which to explore the relationships between natural and man-made architectural elements. The views from my windows high on the hill, and my daily walks in all seasons, feed my fascination with light and how it changes color and tonality. My greatest takeaway from this intense and intimate study is that every moment is entirely unique, and repetition only deepens this understanding.”
From: *Susan Stillman: A Moment of Illumination*
Other projects, such as Away and On the Road Series, are linked by an invisible thread, the horizon, connecting landscapes like fleeting sketches in acrylic, evoking memories of travel and sensations gathered while wandering near home or across the world.
In Local Color Series (acrylics on wood or canvas) the connecting theme is “an exploration of autumn,” with its vivid, fiery hues transforming the shapes of trees. Light, once again, is the quiet, essential protagonist wrapping everything in its glow.
Human figures never appear in her paintings, a deliberate choice by the artist, who prefers to let the changing landscape itself take center stage: shifting light, the passage of time, alternating seasons, and the transformations of houses and nature alike.
And then there is Blue Morning, where a poetic metaphysical realism emerges, a tribute, perhaps, to the imagery of Edward Hopper.
American painter Susan Stillman gives us a fresh, vibrant vision of color and emotion through her landscapes, beginning in her own neighborhood where she loves to walk, “photographing” with her eyes what she will later recreate, with flair, color, and creativity, in her acrylic paintings. Even during her long journeys on the road across the U.S. and Europe, we find fleeting, painted moments that inspire new series, where light remains the main protagonist.
Stillman holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Master of Fine Arts from Brooklyn College. She also spent a year in Rome studying painting through RISD’s European Honors Program. A passionate educator, she has been teaching at Parsons School of Design since 1983.
Her works have been featured in major publications such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. She was selected to illustrate a special centennial edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses and collaborated with writer Pete Hamill on The Invisible City: A New York Sketchbook, now part of the collection at the Museum of the City of New York.
Stillman’s paintings have been exhibited in galleries including the George Billis Gallery (NY), George Davis Gallery (Savannah, GA), Silvermine Galleries, NY Equity Gallery, and the Garrison Art Center.
