Sea Meets Sky is an exhibition of recent paintings by Hungarian-born American artist Susan Vecsey. The solo exhibition at Liget Gallery is Vecsey’s first presentation to a Hungarian audience.
The small-scale oil paintings and collaged canvases on display are impressions of the sublime optical representation of the sublime.
Through her work, Vecsey abstracts the experience of the landscape: her paintings are the result of long walks along Long Island’s east coast. The artist first made charcoal sketches, which were transformed into paintings in her studio. Vecsey’s outdoor observations of form and color unfold in compositional issues. Her painting technique allows her to pour paint onto canvas without touching the brush – a gesture that helps the viewer’s gaze to wander meditatively over the surface of the painting and discover the beauty of the material behind the pigments. The pleasing harmony that emanates from his canvases masks the traces of a conscious, carefully executed process of creation and the artist’s tireless artistic struggle.
Following in the footsteps of the Color Field movement, Vecsey has been using casting as his primary painting technique for some two decades. Her watercolour works have since become more saturated and complex, with less colour and deeper layering. Vecsey’s previous work has been mainly monumental oil paintings and works on paper, but the collaged canvases in this exhibition suggest a new, related direction in her work.
Lili Rebeka Tóth