Susan Metrican

Lives and works in Fairfield, IA, USA

Artist statement

For centuries, certain images seem to resonate across disparate cultures, geographies, and time periods. Birds, flowering plants, insects, and reflected moons have proven themselves as worthy subjects to be painted, woven into textiles, and carved into wood, visually rhyming across cultural differences. As a Thai American raised in the Midwest, I am drawn to imagery that evokes a reverence for rural spaces, recognizable across borders, and held sincerely in each instance. My work is informed by the life of motifs—how they move through time and translate back and forth across cultures, materials, and formats. My research traces moments in history that produce a circular transmission, where iconography and design codes leave and return to the place of origin, renewed in self-recognition. The shape-shifting reanimation that occurs during the movement of interpreted ideas throughout history guides the logic in my studio, allowing me to move freely across themes, processes, and materials. In my paintings, I cut and sew canvas, borrowing techniques from clothing construction and furniture upholstery, and the surface itself becomes a translated object. The transformed canvas works in tandem with the imagery, allowing a third form of meaning to emerge. Though I take cues from outside of painting, I approach these works as paintings in dialogue with artists like Harmony Hammond, Tsuyoshi Maekawa, Ree Morton, and Franklin Williams, who have stretched the medium into sculpture,...

Artwork