Susan M. Wadsworth, Rindge NH and Shushan, NY

Art is often affected by current historical, political, and social events.  I remember co-curating a show back in 2002 at the Fitchburg Art Museum (with then-curator Pam Russell) as to how the events of 9/11 had influenced artists’ work.  Nowadays, it is interesting to see how the Covid-19 pandemic has influenced art and artists.

Some artists have acknowledged their fear, their trepidation in the studio, their reluctance to engage in art. 

But others have discovered a new freedom of creation.  I am one of the latter artists.

How has Covid affected my studio work?  Well, in some ways, Covid morphed from my retirement, and for a while there wasn’t a lot of difference in our lives.  We live in a rural NH town, and my husband does the shopping and cooking, so there wasn’t much reason for me to leave the house anyway. 

For me, the Covid pandemic meant that I could continue my ideal retirement schedule: time for meditation, reading, and exercising, etc. before going into the studio each afternoon.  To be honest, I am a very efficient worker, and two hours is often my limit on actually working on particular pieces for the day.  Then I read art texts, draw out future ideas, or even nap in my chair in the late afternoon winter light.  I have to say the unhurried life of retirement is the best.  It is these “Covid” lessons of change that we need to retain when life opens up and becomes hectic again. 

Thus I decided that “lockdowns” were the time to experiment and experiment broadly.  I work on paper, torn carefully from large rolls so that the uneven edges add a lot to the physicality of the work.  My rolls of Arches printmaking paper are 42” high by 10 yards wide.  That means I could get about 3 10’ works out of one roll of paper.

So unroll that paper I did.  I filled up one smaller wall with a 10’ piece, and the other wall was bigger and close to accommodating two slightly smaller works.  There was a wonderful freedom to do huge curves in ink with huge Asian brushes on those open sheets of paper. 

The first 11’ Magical Spring was a recapture of last spring’s forms, textures, buds, and flowers from April into May.  Nowadays, at the same time of the year, I see the same fresh lines and reddish and yellow-greens that I recreated in that work.  Magical Spring is based on the hills of southern Vermont, with the colors and light changing with spring and the winding of the Battenkill River.  

The funny thing is, the whole work looks like it is oil on canvas, but it is really pastel on paper with ink outlines.  The second large work, Japanese Garden, Silver Pavilion, Kyoto was 10’ wide.  Japanese Garden, Silver Pavilion, Kyoto is an abstraction of a famous garden in Japan.  In this one, people see different things.  I see a branch, they see a trail….but all these ideas are echoed in the energy and forms, the depth of meaning and symbolism of a Japanese garden.

When the upstairs shows scheduled for February 2021 at the Jaffrey Civic Center fell through, I was happy to grab the second room, with the largest walls, to use for my two huge murals.  Here I could spread out the rolled-out paper, with my husband’s help pinning them to the walls. It was wonderful to feel a flatness of surface, a merging of wall and image.  To me, these pieces represented a freedom.  I can’t frame them, as they would be far too cumbersome and expensive.  But in a permanent place, they could be framed or installed into a wall.  I feel they were the culmination of my Covid work.

Few people, unfortunately, saw the “Covid Creative” exhibition.  I shared the space with Linda Greenwood’s metallic collages and huge photos of flowers by Elsa Voelcker.  Like me, Linda had worked freely and actively, creating many new collages during the pandemic.  Elsa’s work was a continuation of the work shown in her recent retrospective at Franklin Pierce University.   

And now, as I sense that my artist (and non-artist) friends have gotten the vaccine and are ready to engage again with the world, I think the artistic flow is going to be immense.  There will be works celebrating the end of the crisis, others examining the effect of the crisis then and now, and new media and styles may be explored.  When artists reacted to the Black Death of the 14^th century, they either became more strictly religious, or they exploded and celebrated life (and sin) fully.  Perhaps similar approaches will be seen now in the arts.

            I have been told that it is useful for a website business to blog.  I love to write, but I write about many things: travel, art, teaching, family, and even politics.  So perhaps it is best to begin at the beginning: why do we create art?

            I was always bright in high school, and one could either be bright, athletic or artistic at my private school.  But never more than one.  I discovered the joy of creating art when I had to take an art class, in this case Basic Design, as a junior.   I received a great compliment when the teacher said I had done some things “that weren’t too bad.”

            Lately, I’ve been in touch with some colleagues from graduate school.  In many cases, they have not been able to create fresh art because of the demands of teaching, family or more.  In this Covid age, it is very time-consuming to create good online studio classes.  I do not envy my colleagues; I feel especially lucky that I retired right before Covid struck.

            I create art for many reasons, but foremost is because I love to center myself by drawing, either in the studio or in the landscape.  I have two masters degrees, and the integration of art history and studio art is intrinsic to the work I do.  I have an Masters of Fine Arts in painting from Cranbrook Academy of Art near Detroit as well as a Masters in Art History from Tufts.  I was lucky to snag a position at Fitchburg State in Massachusetts where I could teach both studio art and art history for twenty-seven years.  In our small Humanities Department, I could even develop some unique interdisciplinary and Asian courses that included some philosophy and even music as well as art history. 

            When I go for a “walk and draw,” a long walk with breaks to draw, I treasure those drawing moments.  I draw very loosely, valuing the energy of the gesture and shape to convey my interest at the time: backlit trees, views through trees to other hills or fields, the changing textures and colors of each season.  By drawing, I see.  After several years, I am beginning to notice which trees lining the meadows turn what colors and when, thus discerning what kind of tree they are, even in barren March or November.  I listen to the birds, but I am not as adept at identifying them.  (I always wish my eldest son, now 27, was with me to educate me about the birds he loves so much.) I soak up the sun, the smells, the sounds, the magic of just being there in the middle of nature.

            I think a telling moment for me was at the Grand Canyon in the fall of 2014.  That was when I took a sabbatical to the southwest to draw the landscape and ruins.  I had a blessed five nights at the Grand Canyon.  One day I was at one of the many pull outs, set up between the cliffs and the parking spaces, working on a pretty large drawing (about 26” x 32”), with my easel and drawing board and pastels all set up as normal.  Suddenly a snappy red sports car pulls in, just a few feet from where I am working.  An attractive young couple gets out, takes a quick selfie, and they are off on their way.

            There seemed to be a great distance between our appreciation of the Grand Canyon.  I was dismayed that this natural masterpiece was reduced to the background of a selfie.  Instead, I would urge anyone and everyone who is lucky enough to get to this marvelous canyon to try to draw it, even if only for 10-15 minutes, even if it comes out poorly (especially if you “can’t draw” and it comes out badly).  By drawing, you can notice the many layers, shapes, and colors.  Can you get them to the paper?  The Grand Canyon is one of the hardest things I have ever drawn, and yet drawing can help you to see and appreciate depths that you cannot fathom otherwise.  Even if the drawing fails, the objective may have succeeded…..that of getting you to see more deeply.

            Drawing is a way to appreciate the world around us, a way to move beyond superficialities to a depth of soulful spirituality.  That is why I create art, be it good or bad.  It helps to connect me to the world at large.