Susan Field's artist statement

S u s a n F i e l d gualala, ca

My work has undergone a distinct change since I began working as an artist over 20 years ago. After a dozen years of drawing realistically with colored pencils – a delicate medium that requires control and patience – I began to experiment with a wider range of materials. My work became mainly sculptural in form, hanging from the wall or on the floor. These past several years, I’ve circled back to my roots, renewing my interest in drawing while continuing to explore textures, both familiar and unusual.

Knitting, sewing and crocheting are skills I trace back to my French Canadian background, practices I learned while growing up in a northern New Hampshire town. I’d never given them much thought; nearly everyone knew how to make sweaters and socks.

A few years ago, after a conversation with a friend, I realized that these skills that had been handed down for generations could be used in my current artmaking. The challenge for me has been to incorporate these craft-based practices with fine art, combining techniques and materials that stretch the boundaries of both fields.

In the “Sewn Drawings” series, I use black thread in a variety of handsewn embroidery

stitches that either extend or play against the drawn line. I usually begin with a pen & ink drawing, taking cues from immediate objects or primal rock figures, then veer off into abstraction. I sometimes add focal areas of black colored pencil, and always include the pleasure of materials such as fur, metal, quills, foil and beads. My intention is to make the drawing as three-dimensional as possible, without diminishing its basic graphic identity.

In my sculptural pieces, I continue experimenting with textures that are so much a part of handmade work. Stitching with waxed twine, horsehair, silver wire or traditional yarn connects me to larger issues of childlike innocence, vulnerability, addiction, flying dreams, constraint, freedom, and creativity.

“Butt Quilt”, for instance, features a child-size metal bedspring with slide mounts wrapped in black crochet thread. Cigarette butts that I gathered from public receptacles are sometimes embroidered, sometimes encaged in a fetal position. The work speaks of the dark side of comfort that simultaneously beckons, repels, and endangers.