Sue Bartfield

"Two Ladies in White, " a Pastel by Sue Bartfield

1977

Sue Bartfield is a contemporary painter who earned her BFA, MS and MFA in art from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Currently, she resides in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In Bartfield’s words, "You might be surprised to know that I do not consider me an abstract artist, nor do I consider my work abstract. Rather I am in love with painting, not just the intellectual process of creating images but even more so the physical act, the movement and sensations. It seems to me that something of this physicality and my obsessive relationship to it, has found its way into my work. That is to say that each painting is not only an expression of my interior but just as much an expression of the physical act of making it. My work begins as a story told in images and ends as only images, nothing but images, countless images, images intersecting and images piled atop one another. One of my favorite things is when people looking at my work discover shapes and images I had never imagined or intended. When they do, I never tell them that they are wrong, for they are not. They are simply discovering themselves in that in which I discovered myself."