Topography and a Knot of Strings

"The Last String Pulled" 12x12", acrylic, string and ink on canvas

I started a new painting series in the last few weeks. The nudge to work with some new imagery came from the offer to participate in the SCOPE art fair by painting a 12x12" canvas to be included in Chashama's booth at the fair. They will be creating a large grid of submitted canvases from artists in their various studio buildings. There's no guarantee that they'll use my canvas, but it's submitted none the less. The canvases are being displayed anonymously so buyers won't know who they got until after they've made a purchase. We"ll see if I get any takers. Meanwhile, I enjoyed the new direction the painting took so I decided to make a few more related pieces.

"Topography 01"
 12x12", acrylic, string, and ink on canvas

I've been building up the canvases with a great deal of texture. Included in the layers are various types of string culled from my jumbled knot of scraps. Embroidery floss to stray strands of cheese cloth have made their way into the tangles. Here, the strands are frayed, overlapped and knotted up to create a variation in the topography of the canvas.

"Topography 02" 12x12", acrylic, string and ink on canvas

somewhere over Germany

"Deep Sea"
 8x8", acrylic and strings on panel

When I showed the paintings to Sam, he mentioned that they reminded him of a series I've been talking about doing for a long time and that these seemed like the prelude. They also strongly alluded to the plethora of photographs I've taken out of airplane windows while traversing fields and mountains. I think this may be the start of moving towards "painting out" those ideas.

© Susan Springer Anderson, 2012,  all image rights reserved by the artist