The Lizard's Den: Artist: Susan Van Wagoner

I have a subscription to The CHRONICLE of the HORSE, a magazine that gives you updates to the dressage, eventing, and show world of horses. As I casually flipped through the pages of my June Issue I came to the last page and there was a picture of a horse. No big deal, until I realized that this was a painting, on closer inspection I noticed that this painting was not the ordinary equestrian art I often see. I eagerly read the small blurb about an Artist named Susan Van Wagoner that lives in Virginia and I felt compelled to contact her. Also... I liked that she was a female artist. I find that most of these portraits are done by men... Being a Moore graduate attracts me to fellow female artists.

As a formerly trained artist I have spent countless hours sitting in hour long critiques of student art work. I have roamed museums all over the United States, Paris, Amsterdam, London... my eye at this point has become very critical. I have seen so much, that at this point a painting really has to have something about it that grabs my attention. Line, composition, depth, emotion, movement, mass, color and a story are some of the things that are the basics to paintings or artwork.

With this in mind, I was baffled as to why a small photograph on the last page of a magazine of a normal horse painting had grabbed my eye. There is a lot of equestrian and animal portraits around today... it's hard to find a portrait artist that can capture a moment, or embody the soul of the creature. Not to mention it is really hard to paint animals, the fur and hair for one thing takes skill to perfect.

Perhaps I like the simplicity of Van Wagoner's paintings. I have always been a "less is more" lover of the arts. The painting that grabbed my attention was "Gray Slipper". It is painted on raw linen with mixed media. Normally you don't see a painting starting with the rear end in the foreground. The line quality is crisp, and the eye sweeps across the canvas out through the horses eye to an imaginary landscape. The horse is alert and looking at what? It has some mystery to it, the composition is simple yet powerful. The accuracy and detail is exquisitely done. I have always been a fan of realism. This doesn't get any better than that.

Gray Slipper. 69" x 34". Artist: Susan Van Wagoner

Then the fireworks went off as I read the small blurb about this painting. It's life size. Absolutely incredible. Do you realize how difficult it is to paint large, in scale, with fine detail like this? It truly takes talent and skill. I could only dream about ever painting this well. I always wanted to be able to paint exactly like this, yet brush to canvas I get something much different. It never comes out this way. The bigger I went the harder it was to get the proportions correct. With large paintings the artist has to step back after every line to make sure it is accurate. I did one painting that was large in art school, it was a constant battle, I would draw something as simple as a hand or an eye, find that it was perfect up close... step away and see that it was either too large, too small, or 3-4" off. How annoying, and because of my lack of patience I gave up and stayed to paintings no bigger then 2' x 2'.

Susan Van Wagoner has started a fire in my heart, and inspired me to eventually get back to the large scale paintings that I once tried to do. In the meantime I started with a 2" x 2" quick drawing.

This is something I drew last night, I felt inspired by Susan's art work. This is about as detailed as I get. I also traced the outline of the photograph, and then just shaded it in. I cheated, but I wanted to work on how much detail I could get in. This is after 10 years of formal training, I get this. Yet, it took me 15 minutes with pen and pencil... it felt good, even if it's tiny and traced.

15 minute Doodle. 2" x 2" Artist: Liz Aaron

I have a long road ahead of me. I contacted Susan to ask her if I could write a blog about her artwork and publish some of her work. Amazingly, she got back to me within the day and said "yes". I felt as if I had won the lottery, and just spoken to a true celebrity. I really admire and respect her work as an artist, and was taken aback at her quick reply and kind words.

Here are some more pictures of her work that I took off of her website which you can find below.

http://susanvanwagoner.com

If you want a portrait done of your pet... this is as good as it gets. Susan has been published in magazines, has exhibited in museums and is simply the best when it comes to pet portraits.