04.29.08

Towards Christiana (Copenhagen)
by Rachel Sussman

My work is landscape-based, rooted in a subtle exploration of humanity's complex relationship with nature and, by extension, with itself. I employ formal devices such as restricted color palates, careful consideration of the tensions between grounds and selective use of line and shape to further the dialog between aesthetics, content, and form. What results in the work is my own unique visual system, imbued with cultural, natural, and scientific context from my extensive travels and choice of locations all over the world. I am currently engaged in creating two major bodies of work, Lost In Paradise and The Oldest Living Things in the World. Lost In Paradise, of which Towards Christiana (Copenhagen) is a part, is a body of lush landscape work subtly addressing the complexity of natural beauty while asking for the consideration of construction and destruction, desire and loss. The work functions within a framework that presupposes free will, and the loss as a perceived or self-imposed one, allowing for either a search for meaning or, conversely, a willful misinterpretation of that which is already obtained. Lost in Paradise is meant to comment on the contemporary zeitgeist via a landscape that is as seductive as it is overlooked.