JOHN R. CLARKE

Susan Hall, Kite Flying at Night, 1986, Oil on Canvas, 30” X 24” Courtesy Trabia-MacAfee Gallery

 

Ten years ago, Susan Hall seemed to have readily identifiable narrative themes and stylistic influences.’ Her carefully orchestrated illusionistic spaces, impeccably detailed figures and backgrounds, and transparent washes of color which gave substance to the outlined forms served an engaging, often disturbing, neo-Surrealism. Now all that is changed. Hall’s new work, like a palimpsest, locks layers of figures and marks within its dense relief surface. Figures emerge from the surface instead of floating upon it; they are often vague, their scumbled edges fleeing into darkness. The elaborate perspectives and detailed narratives have surrendered to allusive spaces inhabited by isolated figures and symbols. Hall’s long search for painting situations that give form to the mysterious has culminated in these haunting, luminous images. Over the years Hall has employed mirrors and other reflective surfaces to underscore the paradoxes of seeing. In Don’t Blame Me Blame the Moonlight (1977)2 a woman at her dressing table looks into a mirror, but the room’s walls have become a haunting moonlit landscape. In Night Reflection (1986), Hall further explores the paradoxes of specular vision by eliminating the figure, so that the viewer becomes the actor in the drama. Drawn by the paradox of the upside-down palm tree, we look into the water and penetrate the layered marks to sort out the reflection’s mysteries. Because of Hall’s superimposed surfaces and thick impasto, fully viewing Night Reflections is a much slower process than in earlier works like Don’t Blame Me. The moon, another long-time symbol in Hall’s work,3 is a key to this viewing process: the eye keeps returning to the moon like a mantra, or the center of a mandala, as the source of Hall’s meditation on the resonances between one’s inner emotional life and its embodiment in moonlit water.

In Kite Flying at Night the simple literal image is the starting point for similar revery. On the simplest level, the triad of person, dog, and kite on the moonlit shore explain the painting, but Hall’s deliberate avoidance of anecdotal detail pushes the viewer to explore other issues. Like Jasper Johns’ much- discussed strategy of choosing “Things the mind already knows to allow me to work on other levels,”4 Hall’s scene, once recognized as a commonplace landscape, shifts into other, more complex readings. Sharp relief edges protrude from the surface and lines scratch the surface; both roughly parallel the horizontal bands of color that establish the sky, water, and shore of the seascape. A balancing act begins here, for the sweeping curve of the kite’s string tries to annul the insistent horizontals of relief surface and colored bands. Anecdote versus illusionistic landscape, tiny silhouette figures versus the sweep of moonlit space, linear versus painterly—these opposites begin the seemingly endless contradictions that keep the viewer engaged.

Light shines through the dark blues and blacks of Nude with Fish; it emanates from the fish and the woman, instead of being reflected from their surfaces. The figures are substantially embedded in another surface— the insistent irregular grid of gesso ridges and palette-knife scratches. Although this grid seems to have suggested to the artist the oblique lines that place the nude in a perspective-defined corner, where is the fish? Like an emblem or banner it “swims,” floating overhead in an ambiguous medium that could be sky, water, or the painted blue atmosphere.

The artist has made the nude both graceful and awkward. Her arms and legs hold the broad arch of her back like the piers of a tall bridge; they also focus our eyes on the unknown object she is stooping to grasp. Nude with Fish invites interpretation while frustrating it. One returns to the light shining through the figures, the

Page 1 skewed relief grid, the marine colors suffused with unexpected violets and yellows. Whereas Hall’s recent paintings explore the cool blues, greens, and blacks of water and night, her new series of gouache-and charcoal drawings on paper employ warm yellows and velvety blacks in chiaroscural renderings that read as “bright darkness” or “shining gloom.” Her process consists of first layering gesso, gouache, and charcoal over the paper’s surface, then selectively removing these layers. Figures and landscape elements emerge from beneath the darkness. Color and light shine through in varying degrees of intensity. Controlling the light is crucial to both the figures and their setting. Since Hall determines the imagery by subtracting layers of charcoal and gouache rather than by adding paint, her process is closer to mezzotint or even relief sculpture than to painting.

The boats in Night Sailing have reflections larger than themselves. Their strongly-lit outlines hold the image together, but just barely. So active are the marks and ridges within the water that they threaten to collide with the boats. Yet the picture’s degrees of darkness have a razor sharpness. Despite the abstraction and distraction of marks and surfaces Hall pushes the conceit of the illusionistic sailing scene to the limit by framing it with a wide yellow band untouched by the charcoal layer.

The yellow frame is broader and the subject more intimate in Woman by the Pool. Like Nude with Fish she is all arms and legs, and like her she is self-involved and unaware of the viewer. She struggles with her towel or swimsuit—Hall leaves this detail unclear—but she’s really struggling with her own shadow. Gloom descends from above and the pool’s edge becomes the edge of a cliff, a precipice. The water in the pool beneath the woman, rather than signaling relaxation and recreation, spells doom: it is the blackest and most ominous area of the picture. The woman wrestling with herself and the night in this commonplace-setting-turned-forbidding becomes, by virtue of her isolation, a symbol of everyone’s struggle with the self and the unknown.

One of Hall’s models for the new work is the Zen koan. She says: Making a clear, concise statement about my work would be like trying to rationally explain a Zen koan. In the process of systematizing and analyzing, it becomes trivialized. A koan, to me, is a vehicle for contemplation and a direct experience of paradox and complexity. A koan is intelligent rather than intellectual. With study, it reveals itself but its essential nature is unknowable.

Hall’s visual koans employ polar structures to build riddles and paradoxes in her paintings that reflect her process of self- exploration. For Hall the struggle and conflict of knowing the self must be expressed in sets of polar opposites: inner/outer, male/female, wilderness/city, slow/fast, alienation/unity. Now, more than at any point in her twenty-year career, Hall’s paintings engage us in paradoxes that keep us returning to her images.

If Hall’s paintings of the Seventies posed enigmas using conventional pictorial tropes, the paintings of the Eighties pose those enigmas in both abstract and realist structures. There is implied narrative, yet it fades in and out of focus. If Hall’s earlier work required interpretation, it was because the artist had made decisions beforehand about the details: perspective, subject matter, figural style, lighting, and color. The new work is richer and more open-ended; it induces contemplation rather than interpretation.

TECHNIQUE: JOHN R. CLARKE: Your paintings of the late Seventies used thin paint that didn’t interfere with the outlined imagery. Now your images emerge from impasto and heavy texture. What brought about this change?

SUSAN HALL: I was taught how to put paint on top of a surface and to manipulate it into forms and compositions. I found this unsatisfying in the sense that this method had the tendency to make paintings heavy and flat. As a result of this experience for many years I painted with washes. These washes werecontained with lines, which described the forms. For me this allowed the painting to breathe. The paint didn’t feel fastened down and I liked it much better. Later I employed the airbrush to expand this need to have light and movement in the work. With this technical means I was able to achieve the atmosphere I desired. Compositions could be finely tuned. I also incorporated hand work done with paintbrush. This eased mechanical stiffness that might be the result of the airbrushing process. JRC: It’s true that the brushwork modified the airbrushing, but didn’t you have to plan the whole image before you began? SH: In these paintings the content and the idea were usually thought of beforehand. Because of the technique, it was difficult to explore or change the image after it was painted on the canvas. Even though there was some manipulation of paint after it was applied, the basic structure and format was unchanged. During these years, the mid-to-late 70’s, my vocabulary of images had a chance to gel and mature. Metaphors and symbols, as well as narrative elements, came forth.

JRC: What caused you to change your technique?

SH: In the late 70’s I became involved very deeply with printmaking. I became fascinated with a different kind of involvement with technique and imagery. I loved the way an image grew out of the process. The tactile quality of etching inspired me to think very differently about surfaces. At this point I began experimenting with the canvas surface. After several years I developed a surface that responded to scratching, wiping, and scraping. It was filled with texture and was rich and subtle, filled with nuances. At the same time it was not overwhelming to the images I painted. This surface sometimes feels like bark, or another kind of natural material. It is alive and pliable, tactile and receptive to my touch. This surface or “ground” is a living, organic entity out of which imagery emerges.

JRC: How do you get the luminosity in these tactile surfaces?

SH: Light is all important to me and I can infuse forms with light by scratching, wiping or scraping the surface.

JRC: And the surface itself?

SH: The surface is the result of applying many layers of a gesso mixture interspersed with sanding. These coats are applied in such a way that spontaneous markings occur. The coats are applied evenly and thinly. They reach a stage of completion when they are smooth to the touch, yet contain a great deal of subtle texture.

Susan Hall, Woman by the Pool, 1986-87, Gouache and charcoal on paper, 30” x 22” Courtesy Trabia-MacAfee Gallery

 

JRC: How do you proceed once you’ve completed the surface?

SH: To explore the possibilities of the surface and to find out its “nature” I cover it entirely with an oil color. Often this is black, but I have used blue or brown as well. I wipe off the color completely and see what new ranges of textures are there. I contemplate the results. I apply more color and again wipe it off. This is continued until the surface “speaks” to me. At this stage I will begin to brush on an image. Often it is an outline of a form. This also is wiped away. If the image seems strong enough it comes through again and I begin to build with it. This process goes on for the entirety of the painting.

JRC: This process is quite different from your earlier procedure, since it is one of finding and then sometimes losing the image.

SH: Sometimes I lose interest altogether and the process begins with another image. Other times an abandoned image is retrieved and worked on again.

JRC: How do you know when to stop? SH: When at last the “ground” is alive and the image has developed out of it to completion I know the painting is completed. There is a resonance and depth of spirit and light that clearly indicates that my work is done.

INTERIOR PROCESS

JRC: Could you tell me something about your interior process while you work in this way? SH: with the technique I use now, I may start with an “idea” of what I want to paint but it quickly changes or grows as I work. The initial idea sometimes disappears altogether and something quite contrary may appear. The images come not from my “thinking,” rational mind but from my intuitive self, or being. JRC: Why do you call this intuition rather than thinking?

SH: Sometimes I feel I work in a trance state. The images are “experienced” and not thought out. My hands simply give direction or form to this process. I become a channel for the images to appear. This is primarily a spiritual process and rational thinking actually stops or impedes it.

JRC: How do you define the term “spiritual” in the context of your painting?

SH: I would define spiritual as being in close contact with the unifying principles of the universe and not necessarily a religious experience.

JRC: How does the spiritual connect with the motor skills of painting?

SH: When I am connected in this manner my hands become unusually sensitized, I feel I can “see” through them. Intuition is my guide to comprehending what is going on and the rational process edits and analyzes after the fact.

JRC: So the tactility of your work is a path for both making and reading the images?

SH: The surface reads to my sense of touch more than my visual sight. In this case, touching and feeling work closely with instincts and intuition; eyesight works with analyzing and synthesizing.

JRC: For me the paradox is that such subtle, evanescent images comfortably inhabit such physical, tactile surfaces and textures.

SH: In these paintings spiritual reality and physical reality coincide. The “ground” or surface becomes equivalent to consciousness. This pure consciousness is the backdrop for imagemaking. My attunement to this level of awareness allows imagery to appear.

JRC: Do you practice forms of meditation that prepare you for your painting? SH: My extensive and continuing involvement with meditation and contemplation reveal to me that the process of letting go of the outside world is only a gateway to internal awakeness

. JRC: Your images in themselves are not those usually associated with meditation, contemplation, or the spiritual.

SH: As an artist I am fascinated with all aspects of being human. This includes mental, emotional and physical characteristics.

JRC: How then do you choose a specific image? Are your images part of your own symbolic or metaphorical system?

SH: Choosing a specific image is the result of interior and exterior forces that crystallize into an impulse to create. The choosing of a specific image is less pragmatic or rational than a need for my total organism to express it. The symbolical or metaphorical content is not a conscious choice but an autobiography of deeply-felt processes.

MEANING OF THE NEW PAINTINGS

JRC: Tell me more about the meanings of your imagery. SH: These paintings are about ordinary events and objects. A bird spreading its wings, a woman dressing, a person standing in the moonlight by a pool, a man fishing, a dog, a flower, or a hawk on a limb are all part of my personal world and vision. As I start to paint and draw them, they begin to have a life and reality of their own. The image appears and disappears. It is wiped away and painted again. Sometimes the image is strongly evocative, mysterious.

JRC: You once said that you wanted your paintings to disturb people.5 SH: More often than not, a strange disquieting element will pierce the structure. Sometimes it will be a single juxtaposed image or feeling. Images intrude from the past, from the unconscious, become dreamlike or leave altogether. Often, they leave in their wake reminders of their existence, such as a fragment of line or paint.

JRC: Do you try to re-form or change these disquieting elements?

SH: I am not interested in the manipulation or the control of this process. I am more a willing, curious participant in creative energy. The whole thing becomes tactile and visceral. Intellectual activity becomes relegated to serving my intuition. What was simply a feeling at the back of my mind, a peripheral tugging, has the opportunity to become conscious. I have little interest in problem-solving or resolving an image. I seek closure, not endings or results.

JRC: How do you achieve this closure? SH: When there is an interior life in the work that sustains itself, then I know my job is completed.

JRC: How does your tactile technique affect the content of your imagery?

SH: My work is about change, process, metamorphosis and transformation. I work on an image until it is completely digested and owned by me. I have a “hands-on” technique. The brush is secondary to wiping and scratching. By directly working with the surface, I can feel an image growing in much the same way a potter builds or throws a pot. The surface becomes a field that to me is alive, filled with atmosphere, precognition and vast possibilities.

JRC: If your painting is a tool for spiritual transformation, what changes would you like it to effect?

SH: For me, the essence of being human is to participate in this transformation process. Ultimately I view my work as being political since I see this process threatened by extinction. I have a growing suspicion that we can well live without cities, but not without nature. As I have said before, my work answers no questions nor solves any problems, but instead presents aspects of the “unknown”.

1. John R. Clarke, “Susan Hall’s New Work”, Arts Magazine 53, 3 (1978), 158—159; John

R. Clarke, “Visual and Conceptual Structures in Susan Hall’s Paintings,” Arts Magazine 54, 1(1979), 153—157.

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