Interior After a Meal
No Longer Available
Completed
2024
Medium
Oil on hemp
Dimensions
52" x 70"
Description
Every home is a stage, and I paint my home with actors both observed and imagined. Family members, pets and guests perform in the intimate, deep space of domestic architecture. I don’t plan out my compositions before hand. I begin by painting one thing: maybe a flower, an arm or a beam of sunlight. Then I parse out what could be beside, behind and in front of that thing. I look past bouquets and out through open doors. I try to record the distances I perceive in a house – the vast plane of a table or the psychological space between figures occupying the same territory. As I paint I conjure up unplanned narratives. I realize I’m revealing small things that have been on my mind: a story in the news, a time of day or year, a memory of those unsettled moments when we’re preparing a meal or have just finished eating. In a house where architecture is a constant, sunlight is a variable. Shards of light are fickle visitors: they arrive unexpectedly, moving across bodies and the sturdy planes of a built environment. Bright spots might settle as simple geometry or as swarming flecks. For me, they make the familiar feel new.
About this Artist
Susan Lichtman
Susan Lichtman is a figurative painter of domestic spaces, working out of her home studio in southeastern Massachusetts. She graduated from Brown University and received an MFA in Painting from Yale University School of Art. Lichtman has had solo exhibitions at Steven Harvey Fine Arts Projects, (NY, NY); Fahrenheit Gallery (Madrid, Spain); Gross McCleaf Gallery, (Philadelphia, PA); and Wilson Museum at Hollins University, (Roanoke, VA.) Recent group exhibitions have been at Steven Harvey Fine Arts Project and Nathalie Karg Gallery, (NY, NY); Wege Center for the Arts, (Fairfield, IA); Chazen Gallery, (Providence, RI); Page Gallery, (Camden, ME); and Crosstown Arts, (Memphis, TN). A recipient of a fellowship from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, she also holds awards from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Susan Lichtman is Professor and Charles Bloom Chair, Emerita, of the Department of Fine Arts at Brandeis University.…
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