Biography:
Susan Hodgin was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. Hodgin moved to Missoula, Montana to study creative writing, fiction, at the University of Montana. She realized 3 years into her writing program that her characters never spoke, and never moved, but simply existed in gorgeous settings. Hodgin immediately switched her studies to painting, and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Montana, Missoula.
Hodgin moved back to Indianapolis to pursue painting. She is currently showing her work around the country. In the Fall of 2009 she began an MFA painting at the Fine Art Works Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts through Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Her studio is located at The Harrison Center For The Arts in Indianapolis.
Statement:
Exploration, expedition, and the discovery of the new is important in my work. It is in new places that I discover new emotional territories. It is the memory of place that I bring into the studio to create my paintings. I do not work directly from drawings or photographs. I instead rely upon eroded memories abstracted by time as source material for my paintings. I use oil, acrylic, charcoal, collage and oil pastels usually on canvas. My paintings are not landscapes but are maps of my experience in a landscape.
I build up the surface of my canvases much the same way that time builds up the surface of the Earth. I lay down acrylic paint. In that layer, I embed textured paper, torn so the edges are frayed and softened. On top of that I paint images, symbols, and brushstrokes. These layers are all randomly placed without regard to the next layer. They can only respond to past and present, and have no notion of how they will affect the future. In the next layer I use charcoal and soft pastels. With these materials I am drawing lines into the terra of the painting. I create forms, I create elevations, and I create texture. These lines respond to the layers before them, but are also looking to the future. The painting will end with the oil paint and the oil pastels, but in its dialogue with the past/previous layers, it will take the painting into a full cycle. A prehistoric red acrylic will show through to the surface, charcoal dust will tint a white field, and a smooth, matte area will reveal the texture of the paper like a scar on the canvas. Black circles will show through a transparent area of the oil paint like an ancient sacred ritual-place abandoned long ago.
Our natural landscapes are rapidly changing and diminishing, and our connection to them is weakening. My paintings are an attempt to map, chart, and record my reactions to nature, both near and far.
Contact:
Susan Hodgin
317-341-3630
Studio:
1505 N. Delaware St.
Suite 050
Indianapolis, IN 46202