Events

The colour red has become an integral part of this series, representing a palpable energy flow. In fact red has become more of a “life force” than a colour. In the paintings red represents an active link to spirit, a symbol of renewal and trust in life. Falling ambiguously from the sky the cloth has come to signify a support and connection to the heavens, a cloak of security, or a place of shelter. The fabric also suggests the vagaries of the “sails of fortune” and stretched taut, the linearity of life’s story. Increasingly the gesture and swag of the fabric have become anthropomorphized, functioning both as a solitary figure in the landscape and as an art-historical prop.

The series Above/Below took as subject the search for spirit from within or without, looking up or looking in. Isolated figures inhabit landscapes where elements merge, constellations are mirrored in patterns of pebble and rock, and a diaphanous sea reflects cloud and fog. Exploring the western tradition in religious painting of a seeker or saint inquiring to the heavens these skyward gazing figures search for knowledge or response from above. The partially submerged swimmers, eyes shut, drift contemplative in an oblivion of ocean and wave. Inspiration came from the words of Vivekananda:

“The Indo-Aryan man was always seeking Divinity inside himself. It became, in the course of time, a natural characteristic of his thinking. It is evident in his art and in his commonest dealings. But even at the present time, if we take a European picture of a man in a religious attitude, the painter always makes his subject point his eyes upward, looking outside nature for God, looking up into the skies. In India, on the other hand, the religious attitude is always presented by making the subject close his eyes. He is, as it were, looking inward.“

Questions of faith, beliefs, and spirit are ongoing subjects of my paintings. Consistently informed by the inherent religious and esoteric content within earlier western figurative traditions, my work reshuffles metaphors of religious imagery exploring the visual language of prayer, contemplation, lament, and renewal.

*Vivekananda: The Yogas and Other Works

biography

Susan Madsen is a Vancouver-based figurative artist. She has studied in Canada, Denmark, and the USA. She received her MFA in painting from the University of Washington in Seattle and has had a presence in the galleries there for many years. Her work is in collections in Europe, the USA, and Canada. Susan Madsen has sat on both the CARFAC BC (Canadian Artists' Representation/
Le Front des artistes canadiens) and CARFACNational Boards. She teaches oil painting and colour/pigment history and remains a passionate student of art history and its symbols. For numerous years she worked as a set designer for Vancouver theatre and dance companies and she sat on the Jessie Richardson nominating committee. She is a long-time student of astrology and its history, and is an avid traveller.