Susan Amons: Vernal Migrations

Susan Amons’ new monotypes are ethereal. To my eye they begin where Audubon’s essays in the surreal leave off. They have a dreamlike quality that fits that term, but that’s only a part of what I see. I also see Japanese screens and a lyricism that I can’t assign to anyone else. I don’t suppose that surrealism and poetry often find a common home, but in Amons’ work, they are convivial. Her beasts—principally, caribou– and her birds– snow geese, egrets, and heron—share a world that is a touch beyond the real. It isn’t quite a classic Peaceable Kingdom, but there is a tranquility in their world that speaks of that idyll. The motivation is consistent with it, although the presentation draws from Japanese or Chinese suggestions about landscape and depth. In Amons’ most fully realized works, the result is bewitching.

The artist’s use of the monotype process and the scale of the work cater to this. The principle images in the largest prints (actually, they are touched with pastel) find themselves repeated—sometimes in reverse—in restrikes or ghosts and this contributes to the ephemerality, to the vision, of a work. For example, in “Caribou Migration,” the figure of the animal appears in various intensities and on various missions. Your eye tells you that this is one and the same creature but it’s reappearance in various guises is the compound from which the surreal arises. One caribou in many places and in many states of substantiality all at the same time moves the work well beyond the real.

The artist’s use of the monotype process and the scale of the work cater to this. The principle images in the largest prints (actually, they are touched with pastel) find themselves repeatedsometimes in reverse—in restrikes or ghosts and this contributes to the ephemerality, to the vision, of a work. For example, in “Caribou Migration,” the figure of the animal appears in various intensities and on various missions. Your eye tells you that this is one and the same creature but it’s reappearance in various guises is the compound from which the surreal arises. One caribou in many places and in many states of substantiality all at the same time moves the work well beyond the real.

This is so to a somewhat lesser extent in “Snow Geese II” and “Snowy Egrets II.” In them, the relationship between these large prints (some as large as 37 inches by 76 inches) and screen paintings is more expressed.

These are all major works by an artist with a singular and committed vision.