*Apocalypse IV*, 2022, oil and enamel on canvas, 24 x 30 inches

SUSAN BEE

Artist Statement

My newest paintings focus on several themes: apocalypses, fables, and reveries. Four of the paintings are based on a medieval manuscript, circa 1290, from France, which depicts the Apocalypse. My paintings reinvent this imagery and I update the setting in a colorful reimagination of the creatures, praying figures, and heavenly setting. I concentrated on creating a space for the playful seven-headed devils and monsters, to play and to taunt the religious and fearful populace. Our stressful times call out for a reckoning with the apocalyptic end-time imagery, which was so well imagined by our predecessors, the brilliant medieval illuminators and Biblical story tellers.

Another tale that I have been taken by is the story of Saint Martha, who tamed the fearsome dragon, the Tarasque. The people sought Saint Martha for help, and she found the creature in the act of devouring a man. Merely by sprinkling holy water and holding up a flower, she caused the creature to become submissive and obedient. I was taken by the heroism of Saint Martha and her closeness with the monster, who almost became like a pet on a leash, in several of the medieval depictions. I made a series of five paintings of her.

In addition, I made a painting of the legendary Saint Margaret, who also performed miracles. She was swallowed by Satan in the shape of a dragon, from which she escaped alive. I depict her praying with dead dragon lying beside her. Our modern times call on heroic women to slay the various evil dragons and nasty demons that confront us.

Other paintings I have created feature witches, devils, masked persons, and imaginary landscapes with meeting places in the woods for friends, and transformative trees and wonderlands. As in past paintings, the fantastical, visionary, and dreamlike imagery is explored with intense and vivid color and with a riot of linear and eccentrically shaped gestures and many textured layers of oil paint, as well as enamel paint and in some cases, sand. These works are homages, but also confrontations. This syncretic blend of the remembered and remade turns monumentality on its head.

I have been a member of A.I.R. Gallery since 1997, and this marks my 10th solo show of new paintings with this long-standing feminist art space. I am celebrating this longevity, as the gallery has had its 50th anniversary in 2022. I am proud of having been a member for half of its years in existence.

Artist Website
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Past Solo Exhibitions:
Anywhere Out of the World: New Paintings, 2017-2020, 2020
Pow! New Paintings, 2017
Doomed To Win: Paintings From The Early 1980s, 2014 Recalculating: New Paintings, 2011
Post-Americana: New Paintings, 1998

Past Group Exhibitions: 23°47', 2°27', 2°51', 2021 SYMPOIESIS, 2020 Eleven x Seventeen, 2019 NADA House, 2019 Women On The Line, 2017
Who Cares?, 2017
Razzle Dazzle, 2016
Wish You Were Here, 2016
Unframed, 2015
Wet Paint, 2014 Anomalistic Revolution, 2012 Vestige: Traces of Reality, 2011 New Work by A.I.R. Artists, 1999