SUSAN VECSEY | STAIN PAINTINGS

JACKSON HOLE, Wyoming – Tayloe Piggott Gallery is pleased to present Stain Paintings by artist Susan Vecsey. A public reception celebrating the opening of the exhibition will be held on Wednesday, August 9 from 6 to 8pm, where conversation throughout the event will be enjoyed with the artist.

Artist Susan Vecsey (b. 1971) focuses on where the ground meets the sky. In her abstracted landscapes, Vecsey skillfully expands on the teachings of the Color Field movement, learning from artists such as Mark Rothko and Helen Frankenthaler. Diving into the relationships between strong shapes and rich, deliberate colors, Vecsey’s work broadens itself to be about the way we take in the world, creating images that feel faintly recognizable and surprisingly familiar. Vecsey’s recent solo museum exhibition at the Greenville County Museum, South Carolina was accompanied by an exhibition catalogue with an essay by Phyllis Tuchman. Tuchman writes, “Unlike, say, Fairfield Porter, another East End artist, Vecsey is less involved with the here and now. She’s not recording the details of daily life. She’s reminding you of places where you have been. With swooping curves, extended horizon lines, and a mix of tonal colors, Vecsey’s compelling images have the character of memories, recollections, reveries. You’re revisiting sites of pleasure and wonderment.”

In her second solo exhibition with Tayloe Piggott Gallery, Vecsey has created increasingly dramatic abstract compositions, engaging with bolder geometric shapes. Using palate knives, sponges, rags and brushes, Vecsey has become incredibly skilled in working with turpentine thinned paint to create the hazy and ambiguous horizon lines that feel so close and yet so far away. Coming from the artist’s well-concealed balance between structure and spontaneity, her extensive planning process and her expertise with difficult to control materials create a tension that is integral to her work. Continuing to work in large scale and occasionally allowing the raw linen to be exposed, these new works display this balance at its strength.

Susan Vecsey was born in Somerville, New Jersey, and lives and works in 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, she was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome. Susan Vecsey’s work was featured in Guild Hall Museum’s 2014 Selections from the Permanent Collection curated by Christina Strassfield, alongside Balcomb Greene, Chuck Close, Eric Fischl, April Gornik, and Mary Heilmann. Vecsey’s work is widely held in the collections of Guild Hall Museum, the Grand Hyatt and numerous private collections.