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Artist Statement:
My creative process is
somewhat abstract in that an
idea, a question, or a feeling
moves me, and like a
conversation with a well known
friend, we converse togather
touching on an assortment of
issues. My ultimate goal is to
speak for those beaten down,
for in their silence I find
cause to fulfill a creative
purpose, that healing and
understanding may be attained
though the universal lauguage
of art....
Further Information
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Artist Exhibitions:
Ink On Paper
Little Artist Studio
Taos, NM 2000
Women's Millennium Show 2000
Onate Visitors Center
Alcalde,NM 2000;
Womens Art Show May 2000
La Mesa Library
Los Alamos, NM 2000;
Indigenous Faces Exhibit,
First National Bank of Las
Vegas
Las Vegas, NM 2000
Intercambio Cultual
Instituto Cultural Chihuahua,
...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
Little Artist Studio,Taos NM;
The Madd Hatter Gallery,Taos
NM;
Simply Angels Gallery,Santa
Fe,NM;
La Bajada fine Art
Gallery,Algodones,NM;
Spanish Trails Gallery, Santa
Fe,NM;
Ninth Life Gallery, Saint
Thomas, Virgin Islands.
Pilar Shepard Gallery,
Charlottletown, Canada ...
Further Information
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Collections:
Coming Soon!
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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The International Library of Poetry 2002
Owings Mills, MD USA
International Encylopaedic Dictionary of Modern
and Contemporary Art 2002
Ferrara, Italy
(Fine Art Images)
Names and Numbers 2001/02
Santa Fe Phone Directory
Dissertation Pending,
Doctorial Canidate Janice R. Deal
Dept of Art Education,
Florida State University.
New Art International 7th Anual Edition
Book Art Press
Woodstock New York 2001;
(Portraying The Essance of the Horse)
Equine Vision Magazine, Summer 2001;
Informart Magazine By Maggie Chartier 2001
Susan Stone Salas Mixes Art and Social Comentary
'On a Vast Plane dotted with piñon trees
old broken pottery hides in the dust,
giving way to bounderies imposed long past
until the time of the whispering winds and the clouds of rain
did the decay and pieces of my life form a pot of clay.'
©2001 By Susan Stone Salas
Susan Stone Salas Mixes Art
& Social Commentary
by Maggie Chartier Courtesy Informart Magazine (Spring 2001 Issue)
As a young girl traveling with her family from Mexico to Guatemala and to Spain, Susan Stone Salas had an early start to her career as an artist and social commentator. "When we were in Spain the bullfights really disturbed me. I just couldn't conceive of an art form that involved killing." While Susan's passion for drawing horses had alaways dominated her art, in Spain, at age eleven, she began to draw bulls. "It really impacted my art a lot, in fact I drifted off of horses for a while and did a lot of bulls, trying to get people to have compassion for the animal." For the first time, people began reacting to the commentary in her art. "It was a really strong moment, being able to communicate something, an idea, and have people actually understand it... whether they accepted it or not." Surrounded by a supportive family who encouraged and appreciated art, Susan's talent was constantly fostered. "My mom is kind of an artist, a creative writer; my dad is an inventor; my sister is a watercolorist; my late step-uncle was Jan Siegel, an established artist in San Francisco; and I have an uncle who is a wood-carver, so I suppose we have a pretty artistic family." When Susan was eight, the family was living in Mexico and Susan's mother gave her two daughters and her nieces a special project, to express themselves artistically -- on a door. "My mom had us all do a painting on a door... I don't remember anything out of the ordinary except for doing horses. Ever since I can remember I've always wanted to be a horse. Wanting to be a horse really motivated me to draw them. When I wasn't crawling around like a horse I was drawing them, riding them. I don't claim to understand it completely, but it's something that has driven me for a long time." In Guatemala, although she still drew a bit, her passion for drawing horses was put on hold for a while. "I was given a horse by a renowned wrestler named Chepe Azari. He gave me this two-year-old filly Muneca to take care of, and I was just in heaven." For Susan the horse is symbolic as an expression of the soul, and in so many of her pieces she captures that expression of soul, energy, and movement. "Being fluent in both English and Spanish, art for me is like a third language because it's something I've done all my life. It's a means of communicating sadness or communicating passion or all of the other emotions. The lines, the movement... different moods reflect different lines. It just happens. And that's part of the magic of it. "I start with an emotion and whatever that emotion is, I just paint... sometimes I don't have a clue what's going to come out. I just evolve with it, grow with it." Susan does not work from photographs, nor does she rely on other images of the animals and scenes that she paints. She prefers instead to paint from memory and imagination. For example, she will take an historical event such as the "Trail of Tears" and approach it as one would approach a puzzle, taking the known elements and fitting them together into a coherent image. "I think painting is spiritual. I don't like to see how I can take the credit for it all. I like to think when you're in that state of mind you tap into an energy and it's like you're painting; but then again it's like it's not really you painting. I don't know how to explain it -- the energy is there, coming out, but you're not the original artist of it. You're just interpreting the energy." Susan feels that art should have substance and serve a function, and like "One Unveiled Teardrop," the image of the "Trail of Tears," make a social or historical commentary. "I really am trying to speak through art. I seem to become one with my subject, then I'm able speak through my art. I think art should be a reminding post, a refection of something that has passed or something that is present, whether it's of a people, a culture, an animal, or a person." In "Mirror" for example, the sense of strength, and of a power not so easily harnessed, bring woman and horse into our own social context. It shows the bond that exists out of circumstance and the fortitude these two share in their struggles. "I was trying to portray the parallel between a woman and a horse. As girls we're taught to be obedient. We're supposed to be the subservient ones, just like a horse is being trained to be obedient. In society and in the work place women are expected to tolerate a lot more. The woman is considered to be the lower one, and in the same way, man (and I'm saying 'man' in general, I'm not saying all men), but man has this thing of conquering horses. It's the cowboy image you know, and I see a connection between the treatment of horses and the treatment of women. "I think it's important for us as humans to know what we've done to each other and hopefully make amends. For example the buffalo slaughter of the 1870s: it not only wiped out the massive herds, but also hurt many indigenous cultures which depended on the buffalo for their livelihood. It would be nice if there could be healing on both sides of it." As she began as a child in Spain and as she continues to develop as an artist, Susan's pieces are moving towards national healing, addressing historical circumstances with an artistic poignancy that requires the viewer to reflect ? perhaps to look at an old event in a new light, perhaps to move beyond it to a place of peace.
* By Maggie Chartier
*Courtesy INFORMART Magazine
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