Julia Weber
Staff Writer
Painter Susanna Coffey will continue the Chautauqua Visual Arts Lecture Series at 6:30 p.m. tonight in Hultquist Center.
Since Coffey is a member of the CVA School of Art faculty, her work is on view in CVA’s latest exhibition, “Harmony,” curated by Susan and John Turben Director of CVA Galleries Judy Barie, highlighting the school’s faculty for this summer’s residency programs. The exhibition is on display on the second floor of Fowler-Kellogg Art Center and will feature an opening reception from 3 to 5 p.m. today at Fowler-Kellogg.
Incorporating a selection of mediums, contents and techniques as diverse as the artists themselves within the faculty, “Harmony” showcases the personal artistic practices of the artists leading the residency program this season. Fellow faculty member Sean Glover delivered a lecture last week as part of the CVA Lecture Series, and many other faculty members will deliver lectures later this season.
Coffey works in both oil and acrylic, and her subject matter spans portraiture, landscapes and still lifes. According to her artist biography, Coffey is an artist who is known for “her ability to create beautifully wrought and expressive imagery from subject matter often deemed ordinary or mundane.”
In her work, she questions conventional ideas of portraiture and the meaning of such an iconic form of painting.
“What is a beautiful appearance? Why do conventionally gendered images involve caricature? Can inchoate feeling-states be adequately portrayed?” she wrote in her artistic statement.
Coffey is also known for her landscape paintings and, in particular, for her night paintings. She chooses the subject for these landscape paintings based on its ability to transform in a different light — or in the absence of it entirely.
“A gas station, parking lot or cow pasture may seem ordinary” in the daylight, reads her online biography, “but after dark, in her night painting these places take on entirely different appearances.”
Coffey received her Master of Fine Arts from Yale School of Art and has exhibited across the world. Her work is housed in collections at major museums including the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Academy of Design and more. Until her retirement in 2018, Coffey was the F.H. Sellers Professor in Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
