White River: a series of Susan G. Scott's landscape paintings.

The White River 2022 – 2026

selection

Studies of the First Branch of the White River in Vermont as part of Scott’s summer practice are translated into large canvases during the winter months. Scott’s early training in abstract expressionism, and the profound influence of Joan Mitchell’s calligraphic brushstrokes, has coalesced with a tradition of landscape painting “shanshui hua” found in the ancient hand-scrolls of China, an approach that emphasizes the value of all entities in nature while stressing their transitory nature. Of particular influence is the individualist painter Shi Tao (born in 1642 in China at the end of the Ming Dynasty). His defiance of the codification of painting in his own time pushed him to embrace visible gesture and the significance of white (or empty) space which Scott has incorporated into her practice. The paintings of this series were created in the wake of a powerful atmospheric river event which traumatized the landscape. Scott’s paintings of the river communicate the rivers’ metaphorical and abstract qualities as a force of life without becoming a harbinger of environmental fate, rather they are reminders of the continuity of change and the need to find equilibrium regardless of uncertainty. CU