Suzan Frecon, cathedral series, variation 10

Suzan Frecon, cathedral series, variation 10, 2012, oil on wood panel, 12 x 9 3/4 inches

Rail: Do you think of your paintings as being derived from nature?

Frecon: Oh, I think nature is a given. It’s impossible to say we aren’t from nature. To me, nature is everything and I don’t put it in those terms where you say they derive from nature but—I was always trying to figure out—I know how important the environment is to me, and I am always so angry against the environmental terrorists, i.e. the Bush administration who seems hell-bent on destroying it! I can never explain how important it is to art. One way is the experience of looking, walking in the woods, looking at a sunset, is comparable to the experience of looking at art or listening to music. It’s just so much a part of the soul of humanity. When you are looking at the Cézanne for example, or a Pomo basket, you just feel strongly about this captured feeling. I would love it if I could aspire to capture something comparable in my paintings.

Rail: You mean something fleeting that’s at the same time completely structured?

Frecon: It’s just innate. One painting that I am working on, actually I think the beginning came from that I grew up on an orchard and I was eating plums, and the colors were so intense in the summertime, inherent in plums, that I said I’ve got to do a painting finding something of these colors.

Read on.

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