A Conversation with October Featured Artist Sue Jacoby
It’s been an interesting past six months. How has your work been affected by the coronavirus?
During this time of social distancing, my morning walks to the lakefront and connection to nature became even more important. The moment that vast water comes into view an immediate sense of calm settles in. This is what I was always trying to achieve with my work so it was just an affirmation to keep working on passing this sense of serenity onto others. Going to the studio and just working with the familiar for now was very cathartic during a time when everything else was changing.
Much of your work in this exhibit is skyscapes. Why is that?
The vastness, the universal quality, the shifting shapes….the sky offers endless inspiration. Even when my paintings have a horizon line it is the big sky that I prefer to focus on. I love how it can envelop you.
Can you describe your process for creating these works?
Surprisingly, my paintings start out very bright before I shift to the more muted earth tones. I begin with an orange/red underpainting. Then my next layer will be an overall sketch in brighter colors where I get all of the elements into place. As the work progresses the edges blur and elements disappear while others emerge. In the later stages, I use many layers of glazes until I get the atmospheric quality that I’m after.
While I begin with a photograph as reference it is more often than not abandoned early on as the work becomes its own new environment.
How long have you been painting skyscapes? How did that interest develop?
I was initially inspired to begin painting “big sky landscapes” by a trip to New Mexico many years ago. The enormous, endless vistas there were so compelling that my style made a major shift. Several years ago, I decided to take out the horizon line altogether on some of the works. I think this gives the pieces a more abstract quality. They’re becoming more reductive and focusing a bit more on the color fields.
