Hi! I’m Susan Smith-Sargent
I am a 2-D artist currently working in two main mediums: silk painting (painting with French dyes on Haboti silk) and water-based mixed media. I grew up in Massachusetts and Connecticut and moved to Lexington, Kentucky in 1992 where I currently reside. My studio is in an artist cooperative called The Artist Attic in downtown Lexington.
My inspiration for making art comes from nature and includes a felt sense of what I see and experience, “inter-being” with it. As a child growing up in New England I spent hours playing in the woods behind our house or in tide pools at the beach. Silk painting, in particular, has a unique way of capturing the essence and luminosity that exist in the natural world.
My other passions include wellness, teaching mindfulness meditation, taking Pilates classes, and forest bathing.
Silk Painting
I first fell in love with silk painting during my time as an MFA student at the University of Kentucky. I was captivated by the luminous effects of the dyes as they spread across the prism-shaped threads of the silk. As a dancer in my early years, the process of silk painting reminds me of a "Pas de Deux"...a gesturing arm with a paintbrush flows across a taut white landscape, moving in time with the dyes as they expand and glide across the silk.
My designs are usually drawn out on paper and then transferred onto silk that is stretched tightly on a special rack. The outlines on the silk are drawn with a resist called "gutta" to hold the dye colors where I want them. When the painting is complete, the work must be steamed for many hours to set the dyes. After rinsing and drying, the piece is ironed and finished as a wall hanging, or adhered to a canvas.
Water-Based Mixed Media
My work with water-based mixed media came more into focus during my years working with young children in a Montessori school. I would often engage my students in collage and painting collaborations, which inspired the evolution of the mixed media process I use today.
These works are process-oriented and begin with a base of collage that includes bits of text and imagery from memorabilia, magazines, old letters, and beautiful Japanese papers. I adhere these to a canvas and paint over the collage material using acrylic paint, mixed with mediums that vary the amount of transparency and allow the layers underneath to show through.
