Susan Kiefer
Medium: Painting Studio Location: Artist Studios at 43-01 22nd Street - Studio# 200 43-01 22nd Street Website:: www.susankieferart.com Artist Bio: Susan Kiefer moved from Kansas City, MO to New York City in July of 2021 to advance her painting career, both by opportunity and inspiration. Born and raised in Kansas City, she lived on the west coast for 30 years, earning her BFA and MFA in Printmaking from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. One of her woodcut artist books is in the permanent collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and was also shown in many East Coast venues. John Zurier was Kiefer's painting mentor, encouraging her interest in abstract oils, which she started showing in the California Bay Area.Returning to Kansas City in 2013 to help care for her parents, she continued painting and showing in numerous KC galleries. Currently Susan's geometric abstracts are in collections throughout the US. Artist Statement: According to L.A. art critic Peter S. Frank "hard-edge painting re-valorized, even re-awoke, the notion of composition as perhaps the prime factor in the formulation of artwork." Edna St. Vincent Millay proposes that for true beauty, simplicity is the most essential ingredient, saying in one of her sonnets "Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare." Geometric shapes are not to be found in nature; they are a product of the human mind, simplifying, abstracting, perfecting the visual disorder of our lived-in environment. It is this extreme humanness of geometric shapes that I find compelling for it denotes the human impulse to go beyond what is given???to create. My hard-edged, rigorously composed geometric abstract paintings offer clarity and a meditatively calm kind of beauty. Emotional engagement enters softly. All images and text copyright Susan Kiefer