Embracing the Light: Rand Finds a New Direction

When artists have worked for a couple of decades, the amount of art produced can be a bit surprising, even to them. When Salisbury artist Susan Rand was preparing for her current exhibition at the Norfolk Library (where she had her first solo show in 1999), she said in a recent interview, she found herself pulling things out of the corners of her studio, just cleaning up, and realized she had a lot more than she thought. She’s a prolific painter, and for the last two years has been producing current work to exhibit. That work is what is now up at the Norfolk Library. “I’m very happy with the new work I’m doing,” she said. “I feel good about the new direction.” 

Rand said she has been thinking about fewer hard edges in her art for a long time, and now she feels her voice is really starting to come through. She is known for her barns and outbuildings and has been drawn especially to dilapidated ones. “I like to think about the mystery of what’s inside, looking under the dark places to find that mystery,” she said. “I’ve gone to those dark places, and now I feel as if I have other things to say.” 

She didn’t want to get bogged down in those dark places, and she found inspiration in looking at other art, in person and on Instagram, and at children’s art, “which is so open and free; through it I am accessing my own memory from long ago.” She has given herself permission to “not be afraid to not be so perfect, to go back to the freedom of being a kid.” 

Her recent paintings are of swimmers. They are more loosely painted and abstract. Rand said she looked at photos she took and sketches she did at the beach and at pools and took a different direction. “I’m trying not to take myself so seriously and I’m giving myself permission to have a bit of fun with my paint. It’s risky and intimidating, but I decided to suspend my inner critic and go for it.”

When Rand first started painting, later in life, as she put it, she would often second guess herself. It took time to get to this point, and she is now doing what is unexpected. In making herself more vulnerable and embracing some natural nervousness and anxiety about her new paintings, she said, she finally became much more confident in her approach, and she is happy with the results.

See the results exhibited at the Norfolk Library, 9 Greenwoods Road E., Norfolk, CT, through Oct. 30.