Close to Color | Susan Horn

A former plein air painter, Horn’s landscapes fall into the canon of Abstract Expressionism, showcasing close attention to color, tonal relationships, and compositional structure. Seeking to express the emotional truth of the natural world, she regards the landscape as both subject and collaborator. Horn received her BFA in Studio Art from the University of Minnesota, where she participated in the Figure Drawing Cooperative and was a member of the Northern Warehouse Sculpture Cooperative. She studied painting with abstract expressionists Ralph Brown and Mary Abbott, informing her work greatly. Horn’s work is included in numerous private and public collections nationally and around the world.

Nature has always been Horn’s primary source of inspiration, in particular, the St. Croix River Valley region. Responding to color, movement, and atmosphere, she often shifts between careful application and more physical gestures – pushing or dragging paint with a brush or palette knife – to create a dynamic visual dialogue on the canvas. These explorations lead to varying degrees of abstraction, guided by her desire to represent nature as she feels it.

Close to Color presents Horn’s range as a painter, with compositions varying from tight, unyielding planes of paint, to brushy color blocking evoking abstract painter Stanley Whitney. The paintings, made in her barn studio over the last few years, are inspired by her memories and feelings of nature and are unreservedly bold, expansive, and joyfully abstract. After experiencing a serious, debilitating health event last July, Horn can no longer paint as she once did; yet she remains an artist at her core. She continues to hold close the beauty of the landscapes that sustained her, and the impulse to create persists within her.

Presented alongside: Ideas in Things | Andrew Grum Carr

Gallery Hours:
Tue-Sat, 12-5pm