The Way of the Wild: Charcoal landscapes by Sue Bryan

For most of us, a cold, chilly walk on a dark winter’s day holds little appeal. But for self-taught artist Sue Bryan, whose moody charcoal landscapes are on view at Carrie Haddad Gallery through the end of 2017, no setting could be more inspiring.

"My mother was raised on a farm in the midlands of Ireland and I grew up listening to very evocative stories of her childhood," Bryan shared in an interview with Trek Lexington of The Blue Review. In her artist statement, she adds, “Trees, woodlands, and forests have long since held a fascination for me. In an overly developed world, it's easy to forget the muted influence of these dark and quiet places.” In the presence of Bryan's work, one feels like a wanderer who has just stopped to consider his surroundings. These aren’t just scenes—they are moments. Time features heavily in each image, as crows speckle the sky, clouds churn above the horizon, and long marsh grasses stir in the wind. Few artists can create work so tangible, especially in complete grayscale.

This effect is due in no small part to Bryan’s trademark process of combining charcoal and carbon, which gives each work that smoky, dusk-like haze. Her charcoal-coated studio, she jokes, is "filthy": "everything I possess is covered in a fine layer of silt, including my husband." However, it's all with good reason: “This process yields a wonderful range of blacks and grays that vary in density and transparency as much as in tonality. I find it fitting, almost cyclical, to render [landscapes and trees] with the char of organic matter."

The result of her process has been met with much acclaim, especially in her native Ireland. For the past four years, her work has been selected for the Royal Hibernian Academy’s Summer Exhibition (Dublin). Furthermore, it has been featured in Manifest Gallery’s International Drawing Annual from 2014 – 2017 (Cincinnati, OH); in a two-person show in Bo.Lee Gallery (London); and in “Exquisite Abandon – Contemporary Miniature Works” at Laguna College of Art and Design (Laguna Beach, CA).

Most recently, her body of work has expanded to include a series of “tree creatures”; undeniably beautiful yet somehow eerie, the “creatures” take root in foggy foregrounds, all brimming with personality. “I approach my tree drawings as I would a portrait,” Bryan writes, which ought to come as no surprise. Each drawing is a vision of untamed nature, where trees and shrubs, unrestrained, follow their own agenda. This, Bryan seems to suggest, is the way of the wild; it’s the world when no one is looking.