Suzanne Lubeck

painting / encaustic mixed media / sculpture and jewelry

email : soozie.lubeck@gmail.com

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statement

When I was five, my family lived in Franco’s Spain, when six I sloshed around the streets of Morocco, when seven I was sure I had lost my parents to the deserts of Egypt. I love travel and the discovery of the many realities that exist. Having grown up in this way frames the way I work. No one medium could contain my thoughts.

I enjoy a freedom of exploration through collage, textures and color. In oil painting I sink into vivid color, the wetness, thickness and complexity of the medium; the surprises, the unexplained and the unexpected satisfy. In the encaustic work, there is the layering of beeswax, thought and oil paint, covering it over and preserving its contents for eternity. I think of my beaded crochet jewelry as “quick paintings”; an opportunity to play with color and because the beads are glass, the light is inherent and simple math allows the composition to take place. The paper mache sculptures came about after the discovery of how precisely the pages of old encyclopedias, math and science journals rip.

As well as vivid color and significant texture the work is about the emptiness of loss, presence of what isn’t tangible but is felt; lightness, changes, unusual combinations, usually what is left outside the mold is what I find curious; the pause in a statement draws me in, makes me look up; what ’s lost but still exists and then, ever humor, I hope.