SUSAN MILLER-HAVENS' ARTIST STATEMENT
My painting is an emotional response to color, light, and human experience. From a very early age I found my reaction to the world around me divided between a fascination with the inner workings of the mind and the aesthetic beauty of nature. Pursuits of both these interests are reflected in my career as I moved back and forth between the two over time. My understanding of nature and human nature came together in visual expression through painting.
I set up for solution artistic problems that combine images and painting techniques from the past with those of the present, that define space through unexpected uses of color and line, that generate for the viewer a sense of psychological ambiguity and timelessness, that comment on human interaction. I represent light using both 16th century and 20th century techniques, either under-painting with glazes or applying pigment and wax directly on the canvas. For example, I attempt to combine the techniques of Durer with those of Manet and to add my own inventions.
Cezanne said that he hoped to forge a link with the past. I am trying to do the same by combining painting techniques and understandings of human nature from the past with what I have come to perceive in the present.