“Art and color should pull you in, transport you, provide an escape from everyday life, and lift your spirits!”
BIOGRAPHY
Born in Los Angeles, and raised in both Chicago and Minneapolis, Susan Hubbard is a contemporary artist based in the Atlanta metro area. She describes her work as “color-driven, Geometric Abstracts,” where her passion for color, brilliant and intense, is clearly evident. Her imagery takes shape through the use of hand-cut papers, incorporating a process that is as much engineering as it is artistry.
A graduate of the University of Minnesota, Susan has had an eclectic, wide-ranging education and professional background in interior design, art, music and architecture history — all of which play into her work. Her extensive travels throughout the world have also provided an amazing repository of inspiration and subject matter from all periods of history, thereby connecting the past with the present.
As a visual artist, Susan not only builds her cut paper compositions, but has also worked with many other media — acrylic, watercolor, pen and ink, colored pencils, charcoal, pastels — and has created 3-dimensional wood sculptures. Her work has been shown and sold at Peterson Fine Art and J. Michael Gallery in Edina, MN, and appears in several private collections.
STATEMENT
To me, art is purely instinctive. Every day I’m inspired to dive in, compelled to explore brilliant, luminous color: gradations and transitions, contrasts and complements, vibrant interactions. It is both a visual and a tactile experience that I can easily become immersed in. Without question, color is the catalyst — the powerful and expressive driving force behind every composition.
While color is the principle theme, form serves as an essential, and carefully designed, framework. Simple geometric shapes become support for the color and provide structure for the work. Together, these two fundamental elements are capable of infinite variation and combination. They fuel my exploration of color relationships, and the impact color juxtapositions have on our perceptions and experiences. In many ways, my work is a synthesis of oppositions: imagination and construction, intention and improvisation, logic and emotion — the seamless blending of technical skill with artistic sophistication.
To this end, my work demands a systematic and calculated approach. Each unique, individually tailored composition is created from dozens, if not hundreds, of pieces of precisely cut papers, trimmed and placed by hand. Technique is paramount. It is meticulous and pain-staking work, requiring a great deal of patience, but it’s a process I’ve always enjoyed and continue to find incredibly rewarding when my artistic visions are realized.
Regardless of motivation, method or material, I want the work to be fresh and beautiful, exuberant and spirited — to be a source of joy for the viewer. I want people to find something that’s unique to them, something they can connect with — to be uplifted by the brilliant mosaic of color.
Kandinsky referred to this irrepressible desire to create as an “inner necessity.” He felt that although ordering colors and forms into a composition was a rational and necessary process, the source of the artists’ means and activity was subconscious. And so it is with me. Purely instinctive.