Susanna Coffey: Nocturnes

March 22 - April 22, 2012

Artist Page

Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects presents Nocturnes, a solo exhibition of paintings by Susanna Coffey. Coffey is well known for her ongoing series of self-portraits. She has simultaneously developed a practice of painting outdoors at night. These tiny nightscapes include images from Chicago, Connecticut, Prague and other places and date from 1995 to 2012. They are painted either in oil or acrylic, often on small canvas panels.

Jeremy Biles writing for the website New City Art, described how Coffey’s “…landscapes in oil are unpopulated, quiet, and diminutive, sometimes just the size of an index card. They carry all the emotion of her portraits but lack fore-grounded faces, and they also convey something at once more abstract and affecting.”

Susanna Coffey expresses her view of our world in the evening–when the sun goes down, but illumination does not cease. The depth of her palette evokes the aura of night—and the degree of darkness changes based on location.