Interview with artist Susan Chambers
Susan Baker Chambers has lived in Arkansas essentially all of her life and like many who grew up in Little Rock, she got her start as a painter as a child at the Arkansas Arts Center Museum School. Susan has continued to be very active in the art scene and is best known for her bold and richly chromatic, garden scenes. For her, painting is a chance to connect with herself and the earth. She and her husband, George, who photographed all the art shown here, still live in Little Rock. Susan’s work can be found at her website and at Boswell Mourot Fine Art in Little Rock and at Justus Fine Art in Hot Springs, Arkansas.
Examples from the Home Garden series.
AAS: You have art degrees from Rhodes College in Memphis and from the University of Georgia in Athens. Are you originally from Arkansas?
SBC: I was born in Dallas, Texas and we lived in a brand-new neighborhood in Dallas with sodded yards and no trees. My Father’s business also took us to live short term in Rapid City, SD, Colorado Springs, CO, and Oklahoma City, OKlahoma. We moved permanently to Little Rock in 1957 when I was five. The mature trees and old houses in my new neighborhood were captivating and I enjoyed a free-range childhood with a lot of outdoor, creative play.
AAS: Have you always wanted to be an artist?
SBC: My uncle was a Beat Generation poet and intellectual and his wife was a painter and sculptor. He was on the faculty at Northwestern and when we visited them in Evanston, my aunt would often take us to the Art Institute of Chicago. The Art Institute was a religious experience for me and my favorite paintings were the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. When I was 12, I took a painting class at the Arkansas Arts Center Museum School with James Valone and I began to think of myself as a painter.
Summer Coxcomb, acrylic on canvas, 36” x 36”
AAS: I suspect the Arkansas Arts Center has even more activities for children interested in the arts than it did when you took your class and I hope they have plans to expand those even more. Was the AAC your primary interaction with art and artists growing up in Little Rock?
SBC: Between college and graduate school and after grad school, I did Artist-in-Residence assignments for the Arkansas Arts Council where I met professional women artists including Louise Halsey and Stephanie Starnes [who died in 2019], who both influenced my art. Aside from the Arkansas Arts Center we didn’t have the art infrastructure we now enjoy until the last 10 years or so. Until Covid-19 we enjoyed the Friday Night gatherings in Little Rock and Argenta, local gallery openings, and the museums. I look forward to the re-opening of the art scene and seeing all the art produced during the last few months.
“Composition is the ultimate visual game with the goal of catching the viewer’s eye and leading it around the painting.”
AAS: Your style, to me, is very calming, despite the use of very bold colors. Bold colors and soft lines – not really what one might expect for scenes of nature and gardens. It is almost like Art Deco posters from the 1920’s. How do you describe your style?
Summer Shade, acrylic on canvas, 36” x 36”
SBC: There is a prejudice against women who paint nature and gardens but if Duchamp can present a urinal as an artwork, I figure I am free to paint a garden. However, I want my paintings to be tough, strong and a bit funky.
AAS: What do you mean prejudice against women who paint nature and gardens?
SBC: In 1971, Linda Nochlin published the groundbreaking essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” in ARTnews which opened up the field of art history to the study of women artists. There was no mention of women artists in my college or grad school art history classes in the ‘70’s. Women artists during the Renaissance did work in their fathers’s studios but were not allowed to learn perspective or to draw the nude figure, both of which were necessary for the important history and religious paintings. The woman artist was restricted to her home and domestic subjects like flowers, family portraits. In the late 1800’s , the American Impressionist Mary Cassatt primarily painted family and domestic interiors. Georgia O’Keefe painted large scale, abstracted flowers which was a new and popular approach. So, there have been centuries of women painting flowers and domestic subject matter because it was thought that it was a woman’s place to stay in the home. I’m trying a fresh approach.
Regarding my style-color, space and pattern are my primary interests. My color is not necessarily descriptive and is heightened to create a sense of joy. I study color theory and the interaction of color, trying new palettes and combinations. I use Golden matte acrylic in flat applications with hard edges to emphasize the color and shapes. My space is usually shallow with no sky or horizon. The ground is an up tilted plane with the shapes stacked on it with little change of scale. Color is used to flatten the space; for instance, a bright yellow-green in the background advances and a cool, dark color in the foreground pushes in. I like to juggle a lot of patterns to create eye movement. When you are in the garden your eye is constantly moving due to insects hovering, plants moving in the breeze, and myriad patterns and details.
End of Summer, acrylic on linen, 36” x 48”
AAS: I also love your sense of composition. Do you first layout the major elements, then paint around them?
SBC: Thanks for paying attention to that. Composition is the ultimate visual game with the goal of catching the viewer’s eye and leading it around the painting. The basic, underlying geometric structure comes first. I usually divide my beginning drawing up into quarters and thirds and arrange my basic shapes, aligning and repeating them when possible. For example, I repeat the oval shapes of a sun hat, birdbath, and tomato cage. The pedestal of the birdbath is the inverted cone of the tomato cage. The diagonals, horizontals and verticals are repeated, running parallel. After setting up the basic geometry of the garden on the canvas, I begin painting the plants from reference drawings and photos.
“I can’t change the political landscape, but I can change my personal landscape to help the environment.”
AAS: What artists have influenced you and your style – or have just given you inspiration?
SBC: I still enjoy looking at the Impressionists, Post-Impressionists and Modern artists including Matisse and Bonnard. Western paintings before the invention of Linear Perspective (1430’s) have an interesting combination of perceptual and symbolic space. I had no interest in Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism or Conceptualism which were dominant when I was in college, in fact Painting was declared “dead”. The shift to images began in the late 1970’s with Pattern painting and Feminist art. I like Roy De Forest ( Bay Area Funk) and David Hockney, who paints nature, space and color. Locally, I liked the paintings of Carrol Cloar. There are so many artists and images on the internet now that I keep a running list of art to look at and read about.
Examples from the Southern Gardens series.
AAS: I especially like Desertification from your Environmental series. The series shows the loss of urban greenspace and portends the future, and I have to say I immediately thought of Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi, but I am a child of the early 1970’s. How did that series come about?
SBC: In 2007 as my response to concerns about climate change, I started a series of paintings of playing cards arranged as a symbol of a house, collaged on to small, wooden panels. Each “home” was then impacted by extreme weather or economic events. My friend Louise Halsey, a tapestry artist, was addressing the same issues and we exhibited our work together as “Solastalgia” at Henderson State University and the Butler Center in Little Rock. Solastalgia is “The pain experienced when there is recognition that the place where one resides and that one loves is under immediate assault”, Glenn Albrecht, 2003. There are 18 paintings in that series which ended in 2016.
Since then, I have discovered that the best antidote for my anxiety about climate change was to return to working and painting in the garden, emphasizing native plants, birds and pollinators. This new series could be called Soliphilia – The love of and responsibility for a place, bioregion, planet and the unity of interrelated interests within it (Glenn Albrecht). I enjoy reading articles by Doug Tallamy, an ecologist and conservationist, who has proposed the Homegrown National Park Project where we can convert our yards to native habitat to support birds and pollinators. I can’t change the political landscape but I can change my personal landscape to help the environment.
Susan in her garden.
AAS: Talk about your newer Southern Gardens and Home Garden series.
SBC: We bought our house and the adjoining empty lot in the Quapaw Quarter in 1986. Over the years, we’ve created our own space by planting more trees, privacy hedges, and gardens. The “Southern Gardens” series is based on more formal elements from our historic neighborhood - our front porch, a neighbor’s antique fence with trained wisteria, and lawn furniture. The “Home Garden” series started from views of my backyard “crazy quilt garden” that has evolved over the 100 years of our house without a coherent plan. It is a combination of flowers and vegetables, some planted and many volunteers that have naturalized over the years. By letting plants naturalize and stay in place over the winter, there are always surprises. I’m planting more native plants to attract pollinators and birds which has changed the focus of my paintings.
Crazy Quilt Canine, acrylic on paper, 25” x 21”
AAS: A happy-go-lucky canine appears in several of your scenes. Is this your dog?
SBC: My canine companion is Jackson who was rescued by Care for Animals and trained in their Paws in Prison program. He’s my companion in the garden and visually interesting with his black and white coat amid the colors. Roy De Forest’s dogs are an important subject in his paintings.
AAS: You must be an avid gardener. Are most of your paintings scenes from your garden?
SBC: I love being out in nature and the garden fulfills that need. The garden is my reference for my paintings which begin with drawings and photos. I don’t produce much food though!
AAS: Do you do get many commissions asking to paint someone’s garden?
SBC: No commissions but I use friend’s gardens for reference.
The 2019 Irene Rosenzweig Biennial Juried Exhibition juror, Joseph Givens, stands next to Susan in front of Merit Award winner End of Summer. Photo courtesy of Maria Marta Villegas.
AAS: You have been successful in many juried shows. What do you like and dislike most about juried shows?
SBC: I like seeing my paintings in another context – a new space with work by other artists. Delivering the work is a good excuse for a road trip. There are downsides to juried shows like arranging shipping. I look forward to the regional arts centers opening up again and applaud their efforts during this difficult time.
AAS: What’s next for your work? Any series upcoming?
SCB: I’m always jotting down ideas, looking at new artists. I will probably add some three-dimensional objects to the edges, experiment more with space, and add more native plants. I’ll keep working and the ideas will come.
