Susan J. Barron’s portrait work lives in the world between painting and sculpture, at the mysterious junction where physical reality meets painted illusion. In her portraits, abstraction and ultimate realism co-exist logically in the same picture plane. You begin at a physical object taken from a person’s life. You move past it into the canvas. The object suddenly blends seamlessly into the painted surface of the canvas. The lush fabric of a woman’s gown flows into the painted version of that gown, living in the world of the painting on the back of a painted woman. A mans’ shoes and trousers flow into the shoes and trousers of the canvas and continue , just as “real,” only non-physical. The shiny material of a boy’s bathing suit bubbles up from the surface of the water, the surface of the water being the surface of the canvas. What rises above the water is physical, existing in space. What lies below the surface of the water is painted, abstract. But what is real? What is abstract? The viewer is caught between two worlds, the world of the “real” gown and the world of the painted gown. Is two-dimensional reality imitating three, or is three-dimensional reality imitating two? |
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