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Swartz deconstructs the portrayal ofnature; she goes behind nature,behind the act of painting and intothe spiritual realm.

Susan SwartzManetti ShremMuseum of Art atUC Davis, California

By Melik Kaylan

Trace an arc between thepolarities of Romantic nature

painting and Abstract Expres-sionism — consider the workof Caspar David Freidrich, the19th century German land-scapist, and the paintings ofGerhard Richter — and alongthat path you will find the workof American artist Susan Swartz.Not exclusively but crucially,Swartz acknowledges the twogreat masters of Germanpainting, some 150 yearsapart, as a formative presencein her work.

If this pedigree seems a bitpresumptuous, consider thatGermany's top curators todayhave acknowledged her

This latest museum show ofsome 40 paintings, at theManetti Shrem Museum of Artat UC Davis, Breaking Away,chronicles the evolution ofSwartz's work from 2006 tothe present.

There are three distinct narra-tives to the work: the aes-thetic, the spiritual and thebiographical. Her explorationof form evolves from repre-sentational to abstract. Swartzdeconstructs the portrayal ofnature; she goes behind na-ture, behind the act of paint-ing and into the spiritualrealm. That is where the line-age of Caspar David Friedrich'swork comes in. His ghostlymystical landscapes wereoften deemed “metaphysical”for positing a figure as wit-ness to nature's revelation.Such figures are often steepedin a kind of divine immanence,poised on the edge of some-thing momentous, beholdingthe unearthly. This prevailing

stature, mounting a 2015 –2017 European wide museumtour of her paintings. Swartzis, if anything, receiving therecognition that is her due.

urge to transcend the spiritualrealm is palpable also inSwartz's earlier, more self-ex-planatory works in this show.

Her Afternoon Shadows from2006 depicts a clearly dis-cernible landscape, repletewith luminescing pale yellowsky, gilding bosky bursts oftrees and bushes. Yet she hadalready begun her mutation

inner state via floating islandsand scarified forests wouldprevail. In Swartz's work, theprocess is likewise gradualand palpable.

By the time of her WaterStudy 1 from 2012 she findsherself in Turner territory so tospeak; with particular refer-ence to his nautical stormstudies where the elements of

of genres to explore “land-scapes of the mind” in an Ex-pressionist tradition.

To be sure, Expressionismdoes not automatically leadto Abstraction. In Chineseliterati painting, for example,centuries pass from a periodwhen faithful imitation of na-ture was the ideal, to whenmisty evocations of the artist's

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Susan Swartz Breaking Away 9. Acrylic on linen, 72 x 72 inches.Courtesy: CAFA Art Museum and Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V. Bonn

Susan Swartz Breaking Away 7. Acrylic on linen, 72 x 72 inches.Courtesy: CAFA Art Museum and Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V. Bonn

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Susan Swartz CloudBurst. Acrylic on linen, 72 x 48 inches.Courtesy: CAFA Art Museum and Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V. Bonn

Susan Swartz Fractured. Acrylic on linen, 72 x 48 inches.Courtesy: CAFA Art Museum and Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V. Bonn

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series of near total abstractpaintings from 2018.

Perhaps the most illustrativeexample of this act of “break-ing away” is evinced in her2007 Serenade of Lilies, theopening tour de force thatannounces the exhibition'soverarching theme of contin-uous evolution. A wondrousstudy, this painting shows themoment when identifiableobjects, such as the lilies,begin to disincarnate andtransform into abstract inte-gers of a mood composition.Recalling Monet's studies ofhis lily pond at Giverny, thiswork is at once a homage topast inspiration and afarewell that forges ahead,well beyond the artist’s com-fort zone.

This leitmotif of “breakingaway” is embedded in all ofthe paintings in the show, atmultiple levels. The worksincrementally tell the story ofSwartz's experience and out-put as a series of pivotal mo-ments: The artist breakingaway from attachment todecorative notions of“beauty” in art, breakingaway from depicting out-ward nature to reflecting herinner nature, breaking awayfrom the limits of representa-tion and successive formaliststages, from the pause im-posed by the duties of moth-erhood, family, career; and

from the debility of personalhealth issues and the imper-atives of the market.

On an aesthetic level, Swartz'swork probes visual forms andgenres in her developmentfrom landscapist onward.Having gradually brokenaway from the mimetic andpic tor ia l she is breakingtowards “materiality” — aninterest in the materials andprocess of painting itself. Thesubject of her work becomespainting itself. The viewerlooks at the adobe-like tex-tured surface of this workspanning time and embarkson a journey inward, withthe artist, culminating in theself-referential post-mod-ernist style: The luxuriant im-pasto of creams and browns,the bas-relief tactility of paintalmost sculpted on the sur-face, the suggestion that theartist is most interested inwhat art does and how itdoes it, and herself doing it.

That being said, Swartzseems more driven in thiswork to seek transcendencethan involution. One can dis-cern the still enduring pres-ence of nature's forces,however incorporeal, in thehurrying kinetic motions andin the earthy colors. BreakingAway 9, with its horizontalalignment, suggests wheatand mud serrying in the wind.Breaking Away 7 evokes

riverine elements. But also inthese paintings and othersafter 2012 we can seewhere Swartz has absorbedlessons from Gerhard Richter,whose polychrome composi-tions — with their jaggedwashes of rainbow colors —invite us to interpret, to lookthrough rather than merely att he su r face. I f Abs t rac tExpressionism can be beautifulor decorative, while still dis-playing profundity, Richtershows us how.

Which brings us to Swartz'sdefining series, Nature Re-visited. The trick here, as inRichter, involves presentingthe eye with seemingly famil-iar elements that act as a lureand then fade into the whole,drawing us closer to theenigma. Nature Revisitedgreets the viewer with pastelsof avocado and pale creamon a surface that feels likeenamel, almost metallic; yetis thickly layered and flow-ing. Inscribed into this solidconsistency, wisps of linesrise ver t ical ly, sometimesattended by little green flecks.They could be leaves. Wecould be viewing a mistysnapshot of stems in aswamp; or a foggy windowwith thin trickles. Or a visionof nature's fecund stirrings,disordered aspirations: Theraw materials of creation thatbecome nature or, indeed,become a painting. M

nature have seemingly dis-solved all forms into chaosand light. In this 2012 workSwartz gives little clue to sub-ject matter, save a half emer-gent orb, sun or moon, lostin a wash of dark purple andgold; possibly sunlight extin-guishing tempests. What ishappening before our eyescan be described as the free-ing of color from form —what the Fauvists, notably

Andre Derain, first did insmaller steps without thecomplete dissolution of per-ceptible shapes — a processthat culminated in Rothko'stotal abstractions.

Swartz's pivotal transforma-tion can be seen in the seriesof paintings ContemplationSextet in 2014 and the2016 the pairing of Frac-tured Mist and Cloud Burst.

Here, nature is suggested notdepicted — its majesticpower conveyed in fluidflame-dance effulgencies, soreduced to their essential ele-ments that observer and ob-served, the inner mind andouter world, all meld together.

In this regard, it is worth bear-ing in mind the show's epony-mous title, Breaking Away,which refers to her latest

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Susan Swartz Afternoon Shadows. Acrylic on linen, 30 x 30 inches.Courtesy: CAFA Art Museum and Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V. Bonn

The trick here, as in Richter, involves presenting the eye withseemingly familiar elements that act as a lure and then fadeinto the whole, drawing us closer to the enigma

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