Artist:Susan Rios
Title:Fiona's Collection
Image Size: 19.75" x 16"
Edition: Artist Hand Signed and Numbered Limited Edition
Medium:Hand-Pulled Serigraph on Paper
About the Artist:The physical environments in Susan Rios' work emanate life-affirming values that appeal directly to our hearts and minds, giving them the power to set us dreaming. Her barely perceptible brush work, contemporary hues and delicate detail bring to life intensely introspective paintings which reveal a strong bond between the artist and her audience. Her blend of illustrative realism and impressionism allows her to portray the scenes, objects and moods which are meant to trigger the imagination of the viewer. She finds inspiration from the plein air painting and serenity of Claude Monet, the colors of Henri Matisse and the decorative patterning and precise attention to detail of Gustav Klimpt. Rios' work recalls the paintings of the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Vermeer, who similarly delighted in depicting richly patterned oriental rugs, colorful tablecloth, vivid tiles, and lush drapery. As with Rios' work today, Vermeer's realistic scenes were thus given an abstract, architectural edge. Yet with both artists, fascination with pattern never springs from purely decorative intent; the care and attention lavished on intricate details invest them with a dramatic and emotional value that enhances the overall thematic concerns. The abstract element provided by Rios' use of pattern is complemented by the shifting perspective evident in much of her work. Planes of space often seem to shift in a Rios painting; objects within a single scene may be shown from varying vantage points. Rios' fluid perspective lends her images a dreamy quality that hints of surrealism. The scenes depicted in Rios' paintings seem to exist in glass-bubble worlds where the laws of realism work side by side with the play of the imagination.