statement

"In every human heart lives something of the longing to return to his place of origin after all the alienation from God and from ourselves to find our way back to our eternal home"  Felix Schlösser

The History of the painted nude in landscape documents exactly this eternal longing.   Setting aside for a moment, any erotic motivations, the nude has always also been a symbol for man in his purist form, his original form, his primordial form.  Stripped of all social indicators, clothing, possessions, etc., he exists independent of identity in a time of pure being( ein Zeit des Seins). Being is our eternal home. Nature does not possess an identity, it is.  The nude in a natural setting has always been associated with our return to a time of pure being, a return home.

Nature is no longer home to us, she is much more a tourist destination.  Certainly no representation of the nude in landscape in the 21st century can escape conveying our extreme estrangement from nature, intentional or not.  There is an unavoidable strangeness of feeling of dislocation which envelopes the most sincere attempt at harmony.  How absurd man seems stripped of his possessions and identity crutches and yet it is indisputable, he gains strength, clarity and beauty when we contemplate him abstractly, as a phenomenon of nature.  My experimentation with modernizing the nude in landscape takes place within this framework of tension between these two poles of self-perception.

bio

born: 1964, New York , New York

education

New York University, BS, 1986

selected awards/honors

Finalist, AW Year in Review, New York,U.S.A. 2012
Monmouth Museum, 1st Place Jury Award, New Jersey, U.S.A. 2011
Faces Portrait Competiition, Artist Window, 1st Place, Hamburg, Germany, 2009
SEHNAP Scholarship for Painting, New York University, U.S.A. 1984

selected publications

INDA 6, Manifest Press, Cincinnati,OH, U.S.A.,2012
Art Domain Verlag, Masters of Realistic Imagery, Leipzig, Germany, 2012
Charles Hives, Creative Quarterly, Journal of Art and Design, New York, U.S.A. 2012
Scope Art Fair Miami, Art takes Miami Finalists, New York, U.S.A., 2011

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Galerie Stephan Stumpf : Susannah Martin PRIMORDIAL TOURISTS, Munich, Germany 2012
ART PARIS, Saatchi , Grand Palais, Paris. France, 2011
Galerie Barthel: Susannah Martin, Menschen Bilder, Frankfurt, Germany, 2008

selected group shows

Dacia Gallery, " Reflections", New York, N.Y., U.S.A., 2012
Galerie Stephan Stumpf, " Figurative Malerei", Munich, Germany 2012
Gallery Fishpiece, "Morgeluft und schöne Maitli", Zürich, Switzerland 2011
Galerie Marzia Frozen, " Gross-Berlin 2011" Berlin, Germany 2011