AMYSTERIOUS NATURE
Susan Henderson deals in mysteries. Her art offers glimpses into her perceptions and experiences of the mysterious nature of the world we inhabit and construct. She is all questions and no answers. Each of her paintings seems to say " Here is a mystery, experience it as I have, and try to work it out for yourself". Themes of life and death, good and evil, man and nature form the backdrop for these questions.
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"Walkabout" oil on masonite, 13"x 16" y. 2007 |
Susan Henderson's work seems to be primarily the product of her efforts to work out for herself the nature of life's mysteries. Her paintings have dream-like narratives in which figures are caught in mid action with their past or future unclear. This mystery of what is happening is at the core of her work. It evokes the sense of things not known or understood. The viewer is left to ponder these artifacts of her explorations and to experience for themselves their unsettling ways.
The figurative elements of her paintings elaborate on these mysteries. Within a seemingly otherworld realm, birdmen coexist with anthropomorphized creatures and strange angels, all inhabiting a world of peering forests and unsettled landscapes.
Henderson's work has the ability to be simultaneously perplexing, engaging and inscrutable. Moods in her work can be sly, humorous and foreboding. Always, her art is completely her own. Cyril Connolly, the literary critic, in an essay about Surrealism touched upon an aspect of this, which applies to Henderson's own dream like paintings. He wrote "To the question 'What does that painting represent?', the artist may answer ' The person who did it'"
Jay Wehnert
