NEW YORK, NY.- Berry Campbell is presenting recent paintings by Susan Vecsey. This much anticipated exhibition features over twenty newly completed paintings and works on paper. Vecsey’s elegant and minimal abstract compositions still retain elements of her earlier oeuvre: soft lines, ethereal atmospheres, and fields of raw linen. However, her new work, which is often large in scale, distinguishes itself through a heightened sense of drama characterized by bold geometric shapes, strong diagonals, and opulent color.
Susan Vecsey was born in New Jersey and currently lives and works in both New York City and East Hampton, New York. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Barnard College, Columbia University, New York and her Masters of Fine Art from the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, studying under Graham Nickson. In 2012, Vecsey was a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome.
A painter interested in creating lyrical and poetic themes, Susan Vecsey uses iconic imagery derived from nature. References to representational imagery are just a starting point however, and serve as a means to convey certain emotions and explore color, form, and shape. Piri Halasz states, “More often than not, these forms suggest hills, fields, horizon lines, seas and skies. But they only suggest such allusions. They don’t insist upon them…” In a recent review in Hamptons Art Hub Gabrielle Selz writes, “Inspired by painters like Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, Mark Rothko, Milton Avery and Helen Frankenthaler—all of whom explored the variance of tonality on limited compositional formats—Vecsey creates work that is filled with ideas about arrangement, lyrical color, perspective, repetition and surface.”
Vecsey states, “There is a great pleasure in the whole process of creating from the anticipation, the processing to the realization.” Vecsey’s oil stained linen and paper works carry on the color field and minimalist traditions in a contemporary context. Vecsey begins with charcoal studies, first drawing her perceptions on paper and then creating elaborate color studies. The charcoal and color studies serve as a guide for her oils on primed linen. The oil is poured directly on linen and the artist allows the medium to flow naturally with guidance. Vecsey says, “With poured paint, timing is everything, and it is important to be decisive with it and also ready to accept or reject the unexpected.” In 2014, Franklin Einspruch declared in Artcritical.com, “this is virtuoso painting.”
In 2014, Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, New York acquired Vecsey’s important “White Main Beach” for its permanent collection. That same year Christina Strassfield, Director and Chief Curator of the Guild Hall, included this painting in Selections from the Permanent Collection alongside paintings by Balcomb Greene, Chuck Close, Eric Fischl, April Gornik, and Mary Heilmann. Mabley Handler Design, Bridgehampton, featured Vecsey’s work in their Hamptons Holiday House. In recent years, the distinguished textile designers, Lee Jofa and Brunschwig & Fils, have used several of her paintings in advertising campaigns and showrooms. Her paintings have been featured in Architectural Digest and Hamptons Magazine. Last year she hosted a private studio visit for board members of the American Federation of the Arts. Susan Vecsey’s paintings are widely held in public and private collections around the world. She is exclusively represented by Berry Campbell, New York.
Berry Campbell continues to fill an important gap in the downtown art world, showcasing the work of prominent and mid-career artists. The owners, Christine Berry and Martha Campbell, share a curatorial vision of bringing new attention to the works of a selection of postwar and contemporary artists and revealing how these artists have advanced ideas and lessons in powerful and new directions. Other artists and estates represented by the gallery are Edward Avedisian, Walter Darby Bannard, Stanley Boxer, Eric Dever, Perle Fine, Balcomb Greene, Gertrude Greene, John Goodyear, Ken Greenleaf, Raymond Hendler, Jill Nathanson, Stephen Pace, Charlotte Park, William Perehudoff, Ann Purcell, Albert Stadler, Mike Solomon, Syd Solomon, Susan Vecsey, James Walsh, and Joyce Weinstein.
