Minnesota artist Susan Horn received her BFA in Studio Arts from the University of Minnesota. She has studied painting with abstract expressionist Ralph Brown and with Chinese landscape artist Zhuo Hejun of Hang Zhou Ching, China. Horn was also a member of the Northern Warehouse Sculpture Cooperative and the Figure Drawing Cooperative at the University of Minnesota. She has been influenced by those traditions in European and American painting that emphasize color and tonal relationships combined with strong composition. Horn has commissions and paintings in private collections in Minneapolis, Colorado, and London.
Artist Statement:
All my painting is related to the natural world and to the way light, color, and feeling change with time and season. When I paint, I am searching for that state of mind which I refer to as a ‘state of grace.’ This state sustains me, and while in it, everything comes alive, whole, and seems to work without any conscious direction.
Thinking and feeling in paint is the way I most intensely experience life. When you look at one of my paintings I want you to share that experience. So I want you to see evidence of how the painting was made. I want you to notice the brushstrokes – the intelligence of the hand that moves the painting forward.
Color is the thread I follow through the chaos of a painting. I want you to feel the movement towards order through the compositional relationships I create. The goal is an organic composition that is structured but not symmetrical or static, its conclusions following naturally from all that precedes them.
As I am painting, I am looking for a resonance – a rhythm that physically hits you as a deep chord that has been struck. This is the sensation I paint towards – the feeling I hope to communicate.