Image: Suzan Frecon, Dark Red Cathedral (tre) 2014

Saturday November 12th, 2016

We arrived in Suzan Frecon’s studio at three in the afternoon. The only light came from a bank of windows along one wall. The sun dropped and the paintings changed.  Shapes that at first seemed static began to move. There were radical changes with each gradual shift in light. The surfaces of the paint, the way it was matte here and gloss there, the carefully controlled color, all of it was at play.  The shapes advanced and receded and it did not feel like an illusion.  

The less representational or recognizable imagery there is in a painting, the more painting seems to resist being described through words. This is the type of painting Frecon creates.  Her work is generous, and there is an exchange, but it is visual and hard to talk about.

Color is elusive.  It doesn’t surpass language so much as it stands alongside it, a different realm.  We may say something is “red” or “orange.”  We may say something is “bright” or “dark.”  What do we say about the unfathomable possibilities between?