We Are Now in Susan Rand's Blue Period

Susan Rand has taken to the water. In a new show, “Sink or Swim,” at Standard Space in Sharon, Conn., that will open to the public on April 1, Rand explores a radical departure from her previous country scenics. The quintessential local Litchfield County artist has been showing work in the area for nearly four years, with exhibitions at the library in Salisbury School in Salisbury, Conn., The Hotchkiss Library of Sharon, and the former White Gallery in Lakeville, Conn. A Connecticut native, her husband is Salisbury’s longtime First Selectman Curtis Rand, whose family tree includes his grandmother, the late Ellen Emmett Rand, a Salisbury painter herself whose portraiture subjects included Franklin D. Roosevelt. (Susan Rand, the niece of Ethel Kennedy, has her own New England Democrat ties.)

Up until now, Rand has been known for her stark scenes of uninhabited rural architecture — open barn doors with interiors obscured in shadow, the aging wood painted in greens that ranged from acidic lime to olive brine, with heavy snow blanketing her landscapes in an unsettling quiet chill. Rand captured the historic quality of the Connecticut landscape, but also its eerie, private residents who claim multiple acres so as to live out of sight. That quality of unease, or at least, the subtext of voyeurism, is intentional on Rand’s part. “To me, it always looks like somebody’s watching. There’s someone behind the door and you just can’t see them,” she said of her work during a phone interview.

Her new series takes inspiration from her time away from Connecticut — her yearly trips to a friend’s house in the Bahamas and more recently during the pandemic, a studio she rented on the cheap from a vacant artist’s residency on Fishers Island, N.Y. Leaving behind painting from life en plein air, Rand has let her imagination, and the water, take hold.

“I started working from memory, which was something I’ve never done before,” Rand said. “I’m so used to trying so hard to get the perspective right on buildings, and suddenly I was painting figures from my imagination. I decided to suspend the inner critic and just let myself paint.”

Unlike David Hockney, who has continuously returned to a signature blue palette for his California swimming pool aquamarines, Rand’s coastline series deploys a unique shade of blue for each piece. Her exploration of the color never settles, hinting at an artist testing the waters, as it were. With broad, kinetic strokes, Rand’s beach scenes largely feature impressions of lonely, moody swimmers, lounging, bathing, even sinking under the surf, but turned away, unaware of Rand’s prying gaze.

“I think I had a voice in my architectural paintings — emptiness, isolation — and I think that voice has carried into these new paintings. They’re completely different, but that same voice is front and center.”

An artist's reception will be held for Rand's "Sink or Swim" at Standard Space on Saturday, April 1 at 4:30 p.m. For more go to www.standardspace.net

Night Swim by Susan Rand Courtesy of Standard Space

Swimmers Number 3 by Susan Rand Courtesy of Standard Space

Night Swim by Susan Rand Courtesy of Standard Space