My first training was in classical music. As an undergraduate I created a new visual notation for 20th century musical sounds. My musical training is the foundation for my painting practice. I explore using musical structures to create a poetry of light and space.

I am inspired by the tremendous emotional specificity achieved in western music 1750-1950, from Bach to Schoenberg. I believe abstract painting is on a similar developmental trajectory, just beginning to embody its potential. I observe and document moonlight, sunlight, twilight. I seek to transform light into paint, acknowledging how deeply emotional the human connection is to light and darkness. I take inspiration from the Swedish tradition of ecstatic art where the sublime is experienced in light, sky, water, as well as in geometry and color. Ancient depictions of the sun, moon and myths exist on runestones in Sweden (400-1100 CE); I draw from these images as well. In my paintings a line can become a horizon or a line of music in a score. A circle can be a planet or a moment of rhythmic punctuation. I seek to create a new abstract/metaphoric painterly language, a sublime expression for the 21st century.

BIO
Sue Carlson lives and works in New York City. She holds degrees in classical music (BA, Case Western Reserve University), visual art (MFA, Cal-Arts) and education (MsEd, Brooklyn College). In 2006-09 she collaborated with artists in Florence, Italy, writing for ArtSEEN magazine and showing work in Bologna, Sardinia and a solo show in 2020 titled “Linea in Andamento” at Chiasso Perduto in Florence. She has traveled in the nordic countries researching ancient runestones and nordic landscape painting. She has been an artist in residence at SIM in Reykjavik and at Björkö Konstnod in the Stockholm archipelago. She has shown extensively in New York City including White Columns, Rose Burlingham Fine Art, Lindsey Brown Gallery, Gerber-Seid Fine Art. In 2023-24 she exhibited work at ICEBOX 4 in Williamsburg Brooklyn, Tripoli Gallery in Wainscott, NY and in Salon Zürcher/ Zürcher Gallery in Manhattan. Sue has an upcoming solo show titled “The Ecstatic Sky” , October, 2024 at Market Street Studio in Ellenville, New York.