ARTIST STATEMENT

Suzan Woodruff was born in Phoenix, AZ. From an early age, she began exploring the southwestern desert first on foot then on motorcycle, immersing herself in infinite spaces and spectacular natural vistas that would later become essential to her art. She was raised by her gold-prospector grandparents who taught her how to “read” rocks and by her mother, who lived a distinctly desert-bohemian lifestyle. She remains an avid hiker, biker, body-boarder and reader of rocks as well as books. Woodruff received an art scholarship to attend Arizona State University working as a printmaker, painter, and sculpture. She soon began exhibiting her work and getting recognition internationally and left Arizona for Los Angeles and New York. Currently, she resides in Los Angeles with her husband, the novelist Bruce Bauman, where Woodruff continues her emersion of art and nature of the sublime.

Informed with the new and old knowledge of nature, space and science, her goal is to capture every strand of the cosmic web and, as stated by the writer and professor Josh Jones when speaking of the sublime, "to be so absorbed, so stricken with awe, and wonder, even fear of nature and art as being not about the thing itself, but rather the idea of the thing."

Einstein said, “Look deep into nature, then you will understand everything better.”

In a system developed over two decades, beginning with inventing and fabricating her patented “Gravity Easel” her process incorporates observation (nature), study (physics) and practice (meditation) into a dynamic creative system of "controlled chaos" that generates pattern formation.  Suzan combines properties of topological mixing (pigment and viscosity of media), water, gravity, erosion, wind, and period orbits to recreate natural phenomena with fractal features cast acrylic panels. These “strange attractors” are paint waves and disturbances that, through the energy created by the movement of her easel, oscillate along the panel surface creating the characteristics of a pattern created by a body of water, and the nacreous powders create the illusion of emergent structures in nature. Another influence on her work is light as a refractive and fracturing tool appropriated from the ideas of kintsukuroi – “the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.”  

Suzan believes that colors are not only physical expressions of light and space, but have psychological dimensions as well; they trigger unconscious associations ranging from the sexual to the sublime. She purposefully leaves space for each individual viewer’s narrative projection to complete the work’s meaning for his or herself. She is furthering her desire to delve more deeply into the various properties of light. Suzan is inspired by the words of Leonard Cohen "There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in."

Visit our Artsy Store to see all of the available inventory by Suzan Woodruff and to purchase her work. Or email us at chloe@shewolfgallery.art to create a custom commission or arrange a studio visit.