Susan Vecsey

Berry Campbell is pleased to present a focused exhibition of recent work by Susan Vecsey. Vecsey arrives at her minimal compositions through an elaborate series of actions that begins with direct observation and ends with improvisation. First, she creates charcoal sketches in the plein air tradition, recording the landscapes along the shores of eastern Long Island. Then she moves to the studio. Using tactics from artistic influences including the Tonalists and Josef Albers, she creates pastel and color studies to achieve the precise effect she envisions. Only then does she begin to pour. Vecsey describes her distinctive process as “working like a watercolorist with liquefied oil paint.” Using large cups, she pours her carefully calibrated hues directly on a surface of brown linen. She does one pour a day on each painting, building the colors in layers and taking the surface into account, typically raw Belgian linen. She works on several canvases a day; each can take two or three months to complete. This show runs concurrently with Vecsey’s solo exhibition at the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, East Hampton.

Susan Vecsey (b. 1971) draws from the traditions of Color Field and landscape painting to create abstractions from perception. Living and working in East Hampton, NY, Vecsey continues a tradition of abstraction informed by nature that is this region's legacy. While she creates her canvases utilizing pouring techniques from the Color Field tradition, the landscape or the figure is often a starting point, a vehicle to explore form and color. Compositions are simplified to their essence to create a universal image. Vecsey works like a watercolorist, using thinned oil paint, carefully poured in a wet on wet process. No brushes are used in the application, to avoid brush marks, and to better show the beauty of materials. “With poured paint, timing is everything, and it is important to be decisive with it, and also ready to accept or reject the unexpected.”

Born in Somerville, New Jersey, Vecsey was raised in a dual culture by parents who emigrated from Hungary to the US in 1969. She earned her Bachelor of Arts from Barnard College, Columbia University, New York, and a Master of Fine Arts from the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, studying under Graham Nickson. Vecsey has been exhibited alongside many notable artists including Josef Albers, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, James Brooks, Elaine de Kooning, Alfonso Ossorio, Charlotte Park, Perle Fine, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, Jane Freilicher, Frank Bowling, Mary Heilmann, David Salle, Sean Scully and Jeffrey Gibson. Vecsey is widely held in both public and private collections and is represented by Berry Campbell Gallery in New York.