Susan Cantrick is an American abstract painter whose primary interest is in painting as a structured visual response to sub-linguistic thinking. Her paintings are analogs of her pre-verbal perception that aim to be as articulate as possible, crystallizing the vitality and complexity of emergent cognition. She lives and works in Paris, France. Cantrick’s essentially modernist painterly techniques, merging the gestural with the hard-edged, are mediated by post-modern digital interventions. Her hybrid practice favors a stylistic eclecticism that can belie its coherent underpinnings. The various processes she explores in her work combine elements of structure and freedom. For the last 10 years, she has been painting from digital studies that are generated from photo-fragments of her previous work. The results resemble what she characterizes as “a gamut of genealogies,” paintings that share a common visual ancestry with their predecessors.
Cantrick recently embarked on the challenge of returning to previously unfinished works, proceeding with new compositions imposed on the already inhabited space. Her various approaches investigate painting as a state of mind, process, and object, revealing a connection to ideas about context and the renewal of identity. Alongside her painting practice, Cantrick creates small-format collages mounted on paper and panels that are often composed of alternate applications of paint and ink-jet printed imagery. Beyond a love of color and the sensuality of paint, Cantrick’s process is driven and defined by her convictions about painting as a form of visual thinking rather than narration, illustration, or critique. As a painter, she thinks in terms of materializing the moment of her perceptual experience when thoughts begin to cohere but before they formulate themselves into language. Though she has occasionally used literature or photos from her environment as points of departure, specific external stimuli are rarely referenced. At the same time, she is aware of how the body and landscape have influenced her preoccupation with how to manipulate flat pictorial space and how best to show its ambiguities and exploit its complexities.
sbc 194 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 194 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on Polyester - Unframed Like sbc 169 and 204, this painting applies acrylic to a polyester canvas, an extremely smooth surface that Cantrick fin...
Canvas, Polyester, Acrylic
sbc 219 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 219 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on paper — Unframed Susan Cantrick's abstract paintings explore the pre-verbal realm of thought through structured visual responses. Her process ...
Paper, Acrylic
sbc 227 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 227 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen — Unframed Susan Cantrick's abstract paintings explore the pre-verbal realm of thought through structured visual responses. Her process ...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 208 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 208 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen — Unframed Susan Cantrick's abstract paintings explore the pre-verbal realm of thought through structured visual responses. Her process ...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 203 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 203 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on Linen - Unframed The artist considers this painting to be a continuation of the kind of space revealed in sbc 195: A formal matrix that is p...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 194 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 194 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on Polyester - Unframed Like sbc 169 and 204, this painting applies acrylic to a polyester canvas, an extremely smooth surface that Cantrick fin...
Canvas, Polyester, Acrylic
sbc 198 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 198 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on paper — Unframed Susan Cantrick's abstract paintings explore the pre-verbal realm of thought through structured visual responses. Her process ...
Paper, Acrylic
sbc 205 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 205 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on paper — Unframed Susan Cantrick's abstract paintings explore the pre-verbal realm of thought through structured visual responses. Her process ...
Acrylic, Paper
sbc 238 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 238 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on wood panel — Unframed Susan Cantrick's abstract paintings explore the pre-verbal realm of thought through structured visual responses. Her pro...
Acrylic, Wood Panel
sbc 242 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 242 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on wood panel — Unframed Susan Cantrick's abstract paintings explore the pre-verbal realm of thought through structured visual responses. Her pro...
Acrylic, Wood Panel
sbc 144 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 144 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen - Unframed This acrylic painting on linen is one of 8 medium-scale paintings that Cantrick produced for her 2012 series based on the pr...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 214 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 214 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on polyester on wood panel — Unframed Susan Cantrick's abstract paintings explore the pre-verbal realm of thought through structured visual respo...
Paper, Mixed Media
sbc 149 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 149 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen - Unframed This acrylic painting on linen is one of a series of 10 that the artist developed from a painting that incorporated a photog...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 154 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
Acrylic on linen - Unframed This acrylic painting on linen is one of a series of 10 that the artist developed from a painting that incorporated a photograph she took of a flatbed tr...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 195 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 195 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on Linen - Unframed Like sbc 194, this acrylic painting on medium-weave linen deviates from Cantrick’s habitual formats. Indeed, the seascape f...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 204 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 204 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen - Unframed The artist considers this painting, acrylic on polyester, to be a continuation of the kind of space revealed in sbc 195 and ...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 204 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
Acrylic on linen - Unframed The artist considers this painting, acrylic on polyester, to be a continuation of the kind of space revealed in sbc 195 and sbc 203: A formal matrix tha...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 203 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 203 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on Linen - Unframed The artist considers this painting to be a continuation of the kind of space revealed in sbc 195: A formal matrix that is p...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 154 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
Acrylic on linen - Unframed This acrylic painting on linen is one of a series of 10 that the artist developed from a painting that incorporated a photograph she took of a flatbed tr...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 197 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 197 (Abstract painting) Mixed media collage on paper — Unframed Susan Cantrick's abstract paintings explore the pre-verbal realm of thought through structured visual responses. ...
Paper, Mixed Media
sbc 209 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 209 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen — Unframed Susan Cantrick's abstract paintings explore the pre-verbal realm of thought through structured visual responses. Her process ...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 207 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 207 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen — Unframed Susan Cantrick's abstract paintings explore the pre-verbal realm of thought through structured visual responses. Her process ...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 204 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 204 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen - Unframed The artist considers this painting, acrylic on polyester, to be a continuation of the kind of space revealed in sbc 195 and ...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 141 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 141 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen - Unframed This acrylic painting on linen is one of 8 medium-scale paintings that Cantrick produced for her 2012 series based on the pr...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 149 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 149 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen - Unframed This acrylic painting on linen is one of a series of 10 that the artist developed from a painting that incorporated a photog...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 144 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 144 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen - Unframed This acrylic painting on linen is one of 8 medium-scale paintings that Cantrick produced for her 2012 series based on the pr...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 154 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 154 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen - Unframed This acrylic painting on linen is one of a series of 10 that the artist developed from a painting that incorporated a photog...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 141 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 141 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen - Unframed This acrylic painting on linen is one of 8 medium-scale paintings that Cantrick produced for her 2012 series based on the pr...
Linen, Acrylic
Boston pebble 21 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
Boston pebble 21 (Abstract painting) Mixed media. Unframed. This mixed media work on paper is one of numerous small-scale works, along with 8 medium-scale paintings on linen, that ...
Paper
sbc 204 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 204 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen - Unframed The artist considers this painting, acrylic on polyester, to be a continuation of the kind of space revealed in sbc 195 and ...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 154 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 154 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen - Unframed This acrylic painting on linen is one of a series of 10 that the artist developed from a painting that incorporated a photog...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 141 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 141 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on linen - Unframed This acrylic painting on linen is one of 8 medium-scale paintings that Cantrick produced for her 2012 series based on the pr...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 195 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
sbc 195 (Abstract painting) Acrylic on Linen - Unframed Like sbc 194, this acrylic painting on medium-weave linen deviates from Cantrick’s habitual formats. Indeed, the seascape f...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 144 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
Acrylic on linen - Unframed This acrylic painting on linen is one of 8 medium-scale paintings that Cantrick produced for her 2012 series based on the prose poem "The Pebble" by Fran...
Linen, Acrylic
sbc 144 (Abstract painting)
By Susan Cantrick
Located in London, GB
Acrylic on linen - Unframed This acrylic painting on linen is one of 8 medium-scale paintings that Cantrick produced for her 2012 series based on the prose poem "The Pebble" by Fran...
Linen, Acrylic