Susan Stillman
Shadows, 2024, acrylic on wood panel, 25 x 20 cm
The landscape I see every day shapes my work in paint. The views from my windows high on a hill, and my daily walks through all seasons fuel my fascination with light and its transformative effect on color and tone. Though I am intimately familiar with this terrain, I approach it with the curiosity and wonder of a traveler, striving to see it anew each time.
Series evolve as I revisit images that have left an impression in my memory. The scale of the work has an impact on how the images are perceived. Larger paintings invite the viewer to enter the space created and smaller scale work feels fragmentary, echoing the sense of moving through the landscape noticing flashes of color on the periphery. Roughened textures on the substrates inspired by ancient Italian frescoed walls allow color to peek through and animate the surface, adding a sense of history and depth to the work.
An absence of the figure is deliberate, disallowing any imposition of narrative and leaving the focus entirely on the moment captured and it’s specific qualities of light, color and tonal saturation.
Susan Stillman’s landscape paintings manifest her preoccupation with light and its transformations, using the backdrop of Stillman’s own suburban neighborhood as well as inspiration from her travels.
Stillman holds a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from Brooklyn College. She spent a year in Rome studying painting in RISD’s European Honors Program. A life-long educator, Stillman has been a faculty member at Parsons School of Design since 1983.
Her work has been featured in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, among others. She is a member of the Silvermine Artist Guild, NY Artists Equity, and has exhibited paintings with George Billis Gallery NY, George Davis Gallery, Savannah GA, and at various other galleries in NY and surrounding areas. She won the Jackson’s Art Prize Acrylic Media Award in 2025, and the Distinguished Teacher Award 2025 at The New School, Parsons School of Design.
She began her career as an Illustrator with work published in hundreds of magazines, newspapers, posters, and books. Stillman was chosen to illustrate a special centennial edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and she worked with writer Pete Hamill to illustrate his book, The Invisible City, a New York Sketchbook.