About Susan DeConcini:

Susan DeConcini is an artist living in Lambertville, New Jersey. She has primarily worked as a Scenic Artist, painting theatrical sets at McCarter Theatre in Princeton, NJ. Susan has displayed her work at Small World Coffee in Princeton, the Boro Bean in Hopewell, as well as Cobblestone Creek Country Club. She has participated in Garden State Watercolor Society’s 2018 & 2019 Juried shows, as well as the 2020 Member Show. Her waterscapes and cloudscapes were most recently displayed at the Princeton Public Library over the winter of 2019-2020. In June, she joined the Arts Council of Princeton as a featured artist in their In Conversation virtual interviews, as well as participating in the 2020 Sauce for the Goose Art Market and the Princeton Winter Village Artist Chalets.

Artist Statement:

I have always had a studio, but never before has it been as necessary a respite as it had since the start of this pandemic. Like many others, I lost my full-time job in the spring of 2020. Suddenly, I was in my studio full time, rapidly creating this group of paintings.

 I have primarily chosen my watercolor subjects as a way to learn and understand how to capture physical forms. I love painting in the wild – it captures the mood and energy of a time a moment more than my photographs can. Clouds and water have been the most elusive in these sketches. I started this series in an effort to improve on my waterscapes and clouds.

However, over the past year, my work has become more about accessing the calm in myself. I have always moved through different subjects quickly, and yet lingered on water for the better part of the past two years. The nature of watercolor offers an element of performance – you need to focus on each brushstroke to get it right, and if you make a mistake you either need to integrate it or abandon the whole piece. Painting water helps take away the tension so the calm can seep in. When I am focused on catching the glint of a reflection or the deep color of a wave’s shadow, I am not thinking about the stressors of pandemic life.

My paintings are part of my continued pursuit to understand the endless forms and expressions that water can take, and to engage my delight in capturing the complexity of a single moment in the shape of a wave.