An introduction...

A Richmond-based artist, Susanne K. Arnold explores the overlay of cultural memory and personal experience in her work, utilizing a personal vocabulary of images and the ancient painting technique of encaustic. She exhibits her work regionally and nationally. Honors include artist residencies sponsored by the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation; two Virginia Museum fellowships and artist grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein and Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundations. Solo exhibitions include the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Portsmouth, VA, Museums, Spirit Square Center for the Arts, and Astra Design Gallery. An emeritus member of Art6 Gallery, and 1708 Gallery,  artist-run art spaces, Arnold had a solo show at Art6 Gallery in 2007 entitled “Earth Bones”.

Artist's Statement

As an artist, I am constantly reinventing myself through intense studio experimentation. For the past several years I have focused on making small experimental work out of beeswax and salvaged discards from my garden and neighborhood, as a means to push the boundaries of my creative ideas, medium and process. The progression of memories and ideas “unearthed” through this working method has resulted in a vocabulary of images and forms that serve as metaphors for the passage of time and the struggle between nature and civilization.

My head has always been crowded with ideas and images, both ancient and contemporary. As a Virginian, it is no accident that images of past and present, memory and imagination overlap in my work, nor that current media stories and pictures of domestic and civil wars, and natural disasters, have resonance in my mind and studio. But it is my physical connection to my materials, and to nature itself, that gives voice and commentary to these images of loss, pain, transformation and renewal.