Tumble and Spray
Tumble and Spray, 2021
oil on canvas
152.4 x 365.76 cm / 60 x 144 inches
catalogue # 21D01
Series WITHOUT SHADE
“Tracing back to the traditions of Indian wisdom, Dōgen warns his disciples that what they see, feel and touch are “flowers of emptiness”: behind their appearance of permanence, objects are only ephemeral crystallizations in the play of phenomena. Rather than being attached to the firm contours of objects, the concept is about letting oneself be carried by the shimmering colours that bloom in the eye and then fade away and flourish elsewhere. It is less about abandoning the sensitive world, then, than about embracing it in its variations, the awareness of its evanescence. This, perhaps, is the invitation that Susan G. Scott’s latest work offers us.
In Scott’s landscapes, one will not find a faithful reproduction of leaves, trees or rocks: what is presented is nature as a fabric of interactions, exchanges and flows. Deprived of the orientation of the sun, we are immersed in a nature without shade, in the heart of the rustling of the trees, the murmur of falling water, the freshness of the dew. The trees, usually pillars of the forest, become streams of clarity. With light eroding the bushes, the canvas hosts forms that are as tenuous as reflections on water.
Made on the spot, with her feet in the stream, Scott’s watercolours are patiently cut and recomposed once in the studio before being enlarged on the canvas: a way of balancing the full and empty spaces as one places the silences in a poem. In the manner of the great scrolls of Chinese and Japanese painting, the landscapes are devoid of the structural power of perspective and horizon line: they unfold according to the paths that the eye traces between the colors and the marks. On this route, the white spaces dictate breath; the strokes of the brush -in their variations of thickness, textures and colors- seem to form a language, able to express the singularity of each rock, each leaf, each waterfall. Like a poem, they transmit to us the joy of observing these fleeting events that form the beauty of nature, while it is still in bloom.”
Mathilde Bois
