Susan Carr

Susan Carr is a painter and sculptor who lives and works in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She employs ideas and motifs found in cartoons to create her ceramic sculptures which are a stand-in for feelings and desires -- both personal and political. Carr has found cartoons to be an effective and meaningful way of expressing complex, nuanced concepts and attitudes. She hopes her pieces challenge the viewer's assumptions and perspectives, sparking conversation around love, desire, memory and hope. Each piece is imbued with feeling and whimsy that test the viewer's ideas about art, creativity and the challenge of embodying happiness.

Mepaintsme: Let’s start with a bit of background - You now live in Cape Cod. What brought you there?

Susan Carr: That’s true - what brought me here was actually my parent’s divorce. My grandmother owned a home here and when my mother and father divorced, I came to live on the Cape, along with my mom and sister. Before that I lived on a military base in Cherry Point, North Carolina, as my father was a navigator in the Marines. After we arrived on the Cape my mother worked as a musician playing piano and singing in lounges. We had a difficult relationship, but what I learned as a young child from my mother was that a woman could do anything. So after arriving here I began to dream of being an artist because I loved to paint and draw.

MPM: What's it like being a professional artist where you live? 

SC: The art scene here on the Cape is nearly non existent for me, personally, but I am a member of "The Cotuit Center for the Arts" which is just twenty minutes from home. I fire my clay sculpture there and the people are really lovely to work with. 

MPM: Growing up, were you always making art? 

SC: Growing up I always made art. I had my first group exhibition when I was five at the Falmouth Artists Guild. It was a self portrait painting called Girl watching ants. I have always wanted to remake that painting. I drew a lot as a youngster and thought I would be an illustrator of children's books. 

MPM: Did you study painting in school?

SC: I studied art, but my initial focus wasn’t on painting. During undergrad, I was studying to be an art therapist, but it was too hard to keep up with, as I had three children and my babysitter quit on me. I had to reexamine my art goals after that and decided to do Fifth year at my art school, The School of the Museum of Fine arts Boston at Tufts University. I was a winner of Fifth year in painting and received a scholarship that I used to continue my education and pursue a Masters degree. I finished my MFA in 2003 at SMFA at Tufts, majoring in film and photography.  I wanted to pursue documentary photography but my medium format camera died, and all of the wet dark rooms dried up, so I began painting again. Looking back, painting was an easy and natural progression of ideas. During that time in the early 2000's, after photography, I picked up where I had left off in the 90's, painting abstractly — until I found that I needed more. I then also began creating abstract sculpture in wood. The wooden pieces are cut with a jigsaw, then painted, and I found that practice to be very satisfying and challenging. 

MPM: Once you graduated did you have any struggles as a young artist?

SC: The art world can be a difficult place. When I was a very young artist my ego drove me. For a time after winning Fifth year, I wanted to be what others saw in me. But eventually I broke down from the pressures of the art world, and the idea of being "good enough" to make it. I found it cut me off from my imagination. I had a block, then, and was unable to make art for some time. Once I reconnected with the love of just creating, things slowly began to evolve. I realized the "we" of art and let go of the "me, me, me, me". 

MPM: Earlier you mentioned your abstract sculptures - I love these. And your return to abstract painting early on. Do you still explore pure abstraction in your paintings? 

SC: I have continued to paint abstractly — but mostly gouache paintings in watercolor books. I am exhibiting two new abstract paintings at Steve Harvey fine art in NYC this summer. Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about new wood sculpture, really considering ideas that I can take farther. I will be playing around with wood very soon as it’s spontaneous for me. I draw shapes in wood then my husband helps in constructing the pieces using screws.

MPM: You work both two dimensionally and three dimensionally and both share an obvious love of paint! Can you tell me a bit about your ceramic figures?

SC:  I am painting now while concurrently creating ceramic figures glazed and painted in oil. I have been thinking of them as my concept of  "Hummel" figurines. As a child I was taken with the Hummel figurines I would see in shops and friend’s homes. They denoted a kind of happiness I desired, so my ceramics are all about joy through the eyes of a grown up child.

MPM: I definitely see that in the work. I do find it interesting that many of your paintings and sculptures feature these, the happiest of characters, yet you also have a parallel body of self portraits that are more somber or introspective. How do you see these relating to each other?

SC: My paintings, especially the self portraits, are more somber depictions of  who I am. I think the self portraits balance the other work. I also have a catagory of paintings called "The Girls" who are representative of myself. They are complicated paintings with both abstract and figurative elements combined in one piece. The child-like, joyful work is a place I like to inhabit, the somber paintings are my emotional inner world, and the girls are a combination of both of these ideas.

MPM: You also have a series of eyeball characters that I’ve always read as homages to Philip Guston. Is this too obvious an interpretation?

SC: My eye paintings came to me after my son died eight years ago. When he was in the hospital I couldn't see his eyes, so after his death, and in my grief, I began making cartoony paintings of eyes so we could "see" one and another. The paintings happened very fast and I see that work as a collaboration and conversation with my son. I came to Guston after I began making this work. 

MPM: You have a statement in your Instagram Bio ‘Love is everything’.  I feel like love is rarely talked about as a prominent theme in art. Did your experience with grief influence this outlook?

SC: I try very hard to embody that phrase in my life and work. My children have really taught me the true meaning of love — not just for them and all that a mother’s love entails, but also for others and myself. If I don't practice love I can become jaded and fall into patterns of egoism and lose my connection to the world. We are all really just reflections of one and other and I want to reflect kindness and love. The world is a tough place, but together we can make it habitable, despite personal trauma, or recent worldwide trauma.  And I am not saying to forget about what’s happening or to look away from the horrors, but to choose to love in spite of it all. To act locally and think globally is a phrase I often think about.

I find joy in celebrating other people’s work and supporting other artists and small collectives. Connecting with other artists and the people in my life brings me joy and fills my cup. After my son died I thought life was over, but have found it was just the beginning of a new journey. Practicing love has been very healing and I am incredibly grateful to everyone who has been part of my life. 

MPM: I’m very interested in artists' listening interests while in the studio. What are you currently listening to?

SC: I listen to podcasts in the studio and music when I run. I practice astrology, so I listen to astrological, magic and tarot podcasts, history podcasts, Ram Dass, meditation and sometimes political podcasts. I especially love The Blindboy podcast out of Ireland. Sometimes I paint without any sound at all.

MPM: Do you have any shows or projects on the horizon that you’d like to share?

SC: I am thrilled and excited to be returning back to @LABspace_art in upstate NY for my next solo there this fall. I have a group show at OYG projects NY coming up in May and a group show at Steven Harvey Fine Art projects in the Summer. Needless to say, all of which I am very excited and grateful for.

VIEW ARTWORKS BY SUSAN CARR