Susan Copley, American, born Brooklyn NY, USA

Exhibitions

2019
•The Henry
•The Burchfield-Penney Art Center
•The Castellani Museum of Art
2018
•The Castellani Museum of Art
•The Burchfield-Penney Art Center
•1045 Elmwood Gallery

Awards

2016 Buffalo Society of Artists, Catalogue Exhibition•Frame and Save
2010 Art Dialogue Regional•3rd Place
2009 18th Regional Exhibition •Curators Choice
2008 Kenan Center Niagara Regional Exhibition•Best in Show
2005 Chautauqua 48th National Exhibition of American Art•First Place
2004 Cobleskill National Small Works Exhibition•Top Award Winner
2004 Art Dialogue Gallery•Second Prize
2002 Art Dialogue Art Gallery, Regional Exhibition•First Prize
2001 Art Dialogue Gallery•Silver Medal
2000 Kenan Center Niagara Regional Exhibition•Award of Merit
1991 Chautauqua National Exhibition of American Art•First Prize
1978 Chautauqua 21st National Competition•Third Prize
1978 Albright-Knox Art Gallery National Exhibition•Third Prize

Book may be purchased from:
Buffalo Arts Publishing
Amazon

Susan Copley’s paintings span decades of her career as an artist. Her works have evolved through time and moved from realism to abstraction, their reoccurring themes revealed within the imagery of the paintings.

Copley’s solo retrospective at 1045 Elmwood Gallery in 2018 clearly illuminates the evolution of her work and the progression of themes advanced in previous shows: an exhibition of large scale canvas collages and sculptural wall reliefs curated by Clement Greenberg for the Rubiner gallery in 1986, many exhibitions at the Barbara Gillman Gallery, through illusionary black and white landscapes of the early 2000s as exhibited at the Butler Museum. One of her canvas collages, Rhythm and Blues (1985) was purchased for their permanent collection and is currently on view in an exhibition at the
Castellani Art Museum.

Experimenting with various materials of wood, paper, or board, Copley creates sculptural wall reliefs that echo the movement and qualities of paintings such as Broken Hillside and Back In Time made during this period. In Blue,(2018) a wall relief, the shapes point from the center of the work to irregular outer edges suggesting a wave in action.

The many paintings in the colorful and simplified Banner Series,(2007-2015) include works such as Four Seasons (2014) and City Gardens (2014) in the Oishei Childrens Hospital collection, and Ribbons with its overlapping stripes of iridescence implying individual paintings within each band of color.

The series Environmentals (2019) is distinguished by vibrant, colorful abstract images of fields and flowers as in Water Fall, Wild Grass, and Paradise Garden. At the same time, another series of paintings, Big Sky and Horizontals, implies a shift towards serenity and calm while still focusing on line and color and a large expanse of the universe as revealed in the works Storm on Sunday and Sunset.

Artist Statement

Art has always been the focus of my life and has shaped the way I see the world. I interpret what I see in my own way, somewhere between abstraction and realism. My work relates to and celebrates the world around us, the natural environment, the elements found in nature, the colors of flowers, the effect of light on a copse of trees, and the repetition of patterns found in landscapes. Memories such as an expanse of sky, earth and clouds, or the ripples on water are inspirations for my paintings. I simplify and reduce each image to create an abstraction of the environment around me; I see my work as a series of chapters as the story progresses. My paintings are about subjective impressions rather than to a physical landscape or an actual place or time

Biography

Susan Copley was born in Brooklyn, New York. She attended Pratt Institute, lived and worked in Basel, Switzerland, and received BFA and Masters Degrees at the University of Buffalo. Copley’s paintings have been included in numerous solo and regional exhibitions, and a book dedicated to her work, Then and Now, Four Decades of Painting, was published in 2018. It is available at the Burchfield-Penney Art Center in Buffalo and includes an image of the ten-foot painting purchased by the museum in 2019.

Copleys' work is included in several museum collections, including the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the Burchfield-Penney, the Castellani Art Museum in Western New York and the Binghamton Museum, as well as the Roswell Park Art Collection, the Oishei Children's Hospital collection, and the Jewish Center of Greater Buffalo and in numerous private collections.