The following is the complete edited transcript of an artist interview of Suzan Frecon that I conducted during Sept 2022.
Gina Dominique (GD): My Artist Interview with Suzan Frecon. We're in her studio in the Germantown, and I've known Susan and her work since about 2017. (To Suzan:) It's only going to be available to my supervisors. One is here in NY, one is in Australia, and one is in England. You are one of probably ten artists in the end who I'll interview. So, it's more likely that after conducting each specific interview, I'll write them up across common themes. Of course, I’m going to credit you, and each artist with what they say, and quote you, but it's not going to be the whole interview. It will end up being referred to as ‘data.’
(Suzan Frecon (SF): I'm wondering what a good background would be? Let me set this up, and I'll sit there…Okay, great. I'm going to make it just fine. So, you go ahead and sit down, and let me sit down, and then you tell me if this is going to work. We'll be here. You want that little painting in it?
GD: Yeah, that's okay. Do you like that shot? Did you see how I am sitting there, and that is where you'll be?
SF: Okay, there's one in New York City, so that we're in it, and you're in it...If you don't want this to be dark…
GD: Yeah…I think that's great.
SF: Okay. Do you like that I think that's better to you. Okay, do you like that? I think that's better.) ...
GD: … So, even though they are a little bit academic (the questions,) there's not a right or wrong, answer… it's not a test. It's just a kind of framework for us to continue our already started discussion, but we'll be more focused on your work now. I mean, like what you're thinking about your work. I wonder if there is a conscious autobiographical component, and of course acknowledging that you are, like all of the artists that I’m interviewing, and like I am, an abstract painter.
So, I'm not talking about like a figurative element, and obviously, not a narrative aspect, but just an autobiographical component, or maybe motivation? Something that is connected to some aspect of you, your person, or your personality, or your personal experience… Is there an autobiographical motivation for your creativity, or for one for some of your painting elements?
SF: Well, yes, let's say, since about sixty years ago, everything in my life has had some kind of bearing by my painting.
GD: So, like what?
SF: …my paintings are what I spend my life doing. But I cannot point to one specific thing… I mean, I'm first and foremost an abstract painter. And somebody might see a painting and say to me, ‘Oh, you know I see the ____.’
And I don’t paint ‘things.’ But there is something deep inside myself that insists that I choose the colors I do, and that I make the paintings more formal. I lean on formal composition, and color and materials, and when you use those ingredients...those in my paintings, and my life…it’s like I’m writing poetry.
And so, it's true, that when I'm working, there is no sense of time. There is no sense of sound. I am totally in the scale. It's like it's like a meditation, but it's much, much bigger than that. So, one artist said, I don't know who, that every painting you do is a self-portrait. So, where I'm at now, and if I have a lifetime, I'm going to be experimenting (with) other things.
I think my roots are in abstract expressionism, and (...) this paring away, distilling things down. But, I don't think of myself always a female…but I think in terms of humanity…of all of the world...that we have a common denominator…
GD: So, when did you start...how old were you when you started painting?
SF: Well, I committed to painting when I went off to school. I was interested in science, and in order. I loved it. I didn't have a major, but I knew I was supposed to major education. So that my father would be supportive. I wanted to do paint though...I tried to figure out where I was going to take it. You know, for a long time. It, for instance, figurative painting was for me.
Maybe what I think is that our careers, our lives, and especially if we do something that is more esoteric… like fine arts….it figures us out as much as we figure it out. I do like figurative painting, but it doesn't have to be like Bill Trailer’s. He was very honest.
And, it is some kind of passion… it's a knowledge. That is the case with me. But I love other subjects too... I feel could be an architect. I really feel strongly about going to a cathedral, like Chartres. It’s a really huge. It’s a great, and completely mysterious place that’s filled by many, many people, and so much knowledge. (To construct a space like that) is involved … it’s a mathematical science. I like that… I use measurements in my work, and proportions that go way back to the Egyptians. They used to make measurements using exacting measuring devices… before anyone else did.
Whether I, or the viewer, knows your/one’s tools or motivations or not, we wrestle with the work… over a long period of time. And it takes more than one hour to figure out the color. Some of the colors are like voices. Some forms are the same. And I want them to co-exist, spatially. And the scale is important too. It acts like the environment.
So, a lot of people are used to looking at something in a way…they want to see the picture they want to see. So, before my painting comes, I form the support. And I've worked out something that is, and something that isn't working for me. I work back and forth with that. If I have something that pleases me, and it has movement, say in the dimensions, and in the surfaces, or if some of the forms are shining, and some are not, then that can make it, turn from negative to positive.
I'm motivated to get completely out of the way. Say, if you're sitting there looking at this painting, and become equally aware of both the top and bottom…if I become really conscious, then sometimes I realize that the bottom of the painting could exist as the top.
GD: And I wonder, do you always start a diptych as one painting, or do you sometimes start them separately?
SF: This has always been one painting, or even if it wasn't initially, at some very early stage, the two panels became one piece. Maybe originally from conception, or soon after. Whereas, that one doesn't exist like this one at all. This is only half the painting, so, I am not always that methodical.
I'm drawing…first I have a little sketch like this. (Suzan has pulled out drawings from her flat files to show me.) I think I've always worked with a sketch, and that one was for this painting. If I get a sketch that I like…well, that's the history of the idea.
…I'm using this line…but let me show you this one first... with the plan, for this one. Okay, so originally this was here, and this was there. Then I thought of this from, when I was visiting Italy. I mean… I was thinking of this pink stone… it’s slightly 'pink'…and of the rose windows in a church, and I was singing. I thought I’d like to have a form that was rounded, but also a form that is kind of static. I use asymmetry because...it makes my paintings...less static.
GD: So, these two horizontals were never independent of one (another)?
SF: Well, actually, I was using disproportionate canvases… I was drawing it on the short narrow one, and I wasn't satisfied with that, because it was too long this way. And so, at one point after years of working with one thing, I put one panel on top of another. And since I've been painting so long, you know, I could go back... and make another step in another direction.
GD: What is it… did you used to use a landscape format…?
SF: Yes… and it was vertical for a while…one horizontal on top of the other horizontal to make a vertical… first I set them up side-by-side. I mean, like this one…(shows me another sketch…) So, I started composing differently… side-by-side, because the outside form dictated that.
I can't make that same composition on this format. So, somehow, it reads squarer… it's a doubled golden ratio, and… I was stepping into unknown territory. And I wanted, like a bedrock compositional (structure) that I could extrapolate from, and that would generate in my paintings… that would hold them… I think the composition is strong.
And, at the time, I was very drawn to geometry, and I wanted to use it to strengthen my work. And I will say that it started to occur to me in my seventies when I was looking at other things too… not just doing geometric paintings… I was doing expressionistic work... So, prior, in about 1960, I was doing sort of, very Ravier-type painting. It was not the way I wanted to paint. I was influenced by other artists.
GD: And how do you see yourself in the context of it now?
SF: I have been painting for so long. It's a long story… Anyway, I don't need the figure to know what's going on. So, I threw it out, and never moved back to using it. I just thought I'm not going to do figures.
GD: Can you discuss the time you were painting in Spain?
SF: Yeah, I think one of the biggest things that I realized was that what I needed to do was to be in the US… And, there was a lot of geometric abstraction at the time. I was very much aware of that, and I really liked it. But I tried doing geometric, or very simple painting, and I didn't feel that I could do something significant… in the context of all that was going on. So, I sort of...put it on the back burner. Then, I did a bunch of gestural painting. I focused on…more expressionistic work… just to develop my ability to handle paint and gesture… At that point I was proceeding without the figure, though, right?
GD: You were doing pure abstraction? You'd gone from gestural abstraction with figure development, to purely gestural, then to geometric abstraction?
SF: Yeah, and kind of also very much more distilled, and more simplified… The figure want to dissipate, I think. But I always was... in nature. I’d try it out in the paintings… I have nothing against small painting. .. but you know, with seven by three (feet) or six by seven (feet)… I was always looking to strengthen my work. And that scale was a turning point. I started to think about how I was going to strengthen my support… how I was going to stretch my composition.
GD: When you say ‘support,’ are you using that synonymously with composition?
SF: The structure of the stretchers that support my ideas determines, in a very mechanical way, my paintings… I just was trying to figure out how my work could be significant in the way that other contemporaries were not working because there were really wonderful abstract artists all around me at that time.
GD: You were painting in New York then...?
SF: Yeah, 1970s and ‘80s, in New York. It was just such a very nourishing mix to be jumping to. It was so much more exciting. So, being in New York really helps me a lot. This is where I need to be. I’m saying it’s my kind of place...it’s not a very cheap place to work, and I love a natural life too. So, through the years, here (we are in her Germantown, NY studio), being in nature became more and more of an important part of the paintings. But it took me a long time to figure that out ...maybe by 1989… that's when I went to New Zealand...in pursuit of finding a different, a more asymmetric little geometry to all of my work...
Then I was also very interested in Agnes Martin’s work. Her clear geometry… some of that work that was in the Guggenheim exhibition more recently. Well, this was…decades before. And I'm guessing you saw the show?
GD: Yes.
SF: I liked her work of twenty or thirty years ago. I was just so curious...about any of the work in that Guggenheim show, which I saw. Did you see some of that work in the PS1 show…?
GD: No.
SF: The Guggenheim show was much more… you know… it had a lot of paintings, and was… very minimal work. At the end of her life, it felt like she had come back into a security of form. But you know… she seemed to reach… a turning point for me, and I then... it got so intense…I have always meant to use geometry. It's my expression. I got very involved in my own ideas… because it took a long time to figure out these paintings… sometimes I use tools, and ask myself, ‘Can I do this?’ Then I look at it, and sometimes I do like it, and sometimes I don't.
GD: We can move to my next question, which is specifically about your use of color, or use of a color theory, formal, or informal. And, like you discussed about your self-devised geometric methods… if you could, in a similar way, talk about color. Say, in a way that you've talked about the evolution of your relationship to historical painting, or at least historical abstraction from figurative abstraction to gestural, and non-figurative abstraction, to geometric… and then developing your own mathematics. Essentially, would you take a little time now, and talk about the relationship to color, similarly to that, or (in) whatever way you like?
SF: Some of this is about everything I do. The color sort of came first, and then the form of the structure.
GD: You're influenced by color then?
Suzan Frecon: Yeah, but you know, it's a system, and essentially, I can use it as an intervention. So, color... color sort of happens... like in the ‘Double Red Curve.’ The title says it. In my current form, on the top, and then a different curve, and then another with a more complicated curved form on the bottom. That was an important painting for me. But in that painting I had, you know, to do several random forms, and I worked for years getting the curves to spread like that over the paintings.
GD: And in this painting?
SF: That was the whole red curve…But before that I was doing a single curve, but the color was always horrible. And color was very integral to the painting… so one of the colors for the taller composition, and the materials became very important too. It is the material specifically, or this combination of color, and material, and form, and proportion that I was focused on...
There was a remarkable crucifix in one of the churches that I visited … it looked one way from after, then, as I got closer, I started to see the movement or the expression of the figure. It was very, very moving, and I wanted to get that expression into my paintings with abstraction. This was in the early two thousands… I started using color to balance my compositions. If you turn this, you can see that by adding light into a composition that is otherwise dark, you shift the balance… It's real dramatic…
GD: Oh, so this gets to the second half of that color question… I just want to know if you have anything else that I didn't cover about color that you might want to add... maybe more specifically... just like you spoke about what you want the color to communicate, which sounds to me like different experiences?
SF: The same painting for the viewer may be affected by not only light, but also by architecture.
GD: Is there another consideration about your color choices? You said like you're influenced by nature, stone, and glass, and fruit.
SF: well, it all has to work together…color, form, composition… the reality of what goes into the painting… might not be what you experience.
GD: So, my last question, then, is something that we talked about before I started with the recording which is, does philosophy of art or aesthetics, which is phenomenology, or any kind of a philosophy at all, either formally studied, or not… whether it's your own philosophy, I guess I mean in a big, broad, general sense, your own sort of worldview…if maybe you do sort of relate to a formal philosophical tradition or period... like you clearly are inspired by various art, or historical traditions, or painters specifically, could you talk, maybe, about that in some way?
SF: Fred Sandback… he was a very articulate intriguing artist to me, and I didn't understand his work at first...at all. The strings (he used), when he had this sort of retrospective, then I really loved his work after I saw that. I just loved him, and I couldn't begin to explain to you why he became an artist... but when he talks about his work, and what he's written about it is no small thing. It's so beautifully stated. I really love reading what he has to say, and it makes sense to me, and I envy that he was a philosophy major because my knowledge of philosophy is just non-existent.
I took one course, and I liked it, but I never had time to really read philosophy, because it was very time consuming... I started to read Merleau Ponty one time, and that seemed pretty interesting. But my paintings takes a lot of time to do, and then I don't really have time to read, and I need to rest my mind. So, if something stimulates me too much, then I can't sleep. But, I would love to read more philosophy...
So, it's so important to me how we're treating the earth. You know we're killing birds. We're killing people. We won't switch to the sustainable energy, even though we could. Everybody should, even if we can't afford to. But you know, I know people can't afford it, and have to buy cars that takes a lot of fossil fuel. It's just a mess. It's such a mess what the humans are doing to the world.
We somehow, by some fluke, we have a bigger brain. For some genetic reason, we have figuring capacity, and so we have to solve this problem, and live (more sustainably) in our environment. It gives us so much joy to see. Humans need to do our part…if we want to continue to look at a sunset…and we want to still watch birds, and we appreciate nature, but a lot of human stuff is a constant struggle. From my point of view, back and forth... in kind of good versus evil forces. And I think you know this… for me, in our art…being alive and creative. I do like making it, plus the product itself... both making that, and the experience of being a creative. It's, well, I wouldn't know how to define it…It's a choice we make… I live in the world, and I consider philosophy a field of knowledge… and, you know... it's stunning.
GD: You touched on philosophy in three different ways, so I appreciate that. Really I do, and based on what you said, I interpret that there's some sort of organic, natural, harmonious worldview that connects you to nature by being a creative...or by being an artist.
SF: …I mean, I don't know, I think science is really important too. Because that's where everything comes from. That's where our food comes from. And you know we measure the days. It's kind of looking at the sun, and figuring out what the light is. I don’t know how that sounded, but I think science is just so vital to our existence and understanding of the world… and you know, I believe in something else. Crazy… you know, it's something… to believe in something. Yes, I mean, this is more important to me, to see the world around me ,which I don't understand, but I think it's beautiful… being alive. The older I get, the more and more precious it is.
GD: Thank you so much…it was really generous of you. I appreciate it…
Suzan Frecon: Well, if you haven't covered everything, I mean if you missed something, you let me know.
