"there's work and there's love"
susan sales
It is only on page 19 of my paperback copy of The Shipping News by Annie Proulx that I had read the paragraph:"It was spring. Sodden ground, smell of earth. The wind beat through twigs, gave off a greenish odor like flints. Coltsfoot in the ditches; furious dabs of tulips stuttering in gardens. Slanting rain. Clock hands lept to pellucid evenings. The sky riffled like cards in a chalk-white hand."
It is the last sentence of this paragraph that had snagged me upon first reading it five years ago, aside from all of the (albeit very well written) nature babble that came before. I had read the entire passage again numerous times so that I could gradually lead up to this sentence again, following it from setup to payoff, making sure that I had adequately appreciated it. And then again.
I had pointed it out to whom I had been sat with, the first person that I could involve. Rather like needing others to confirm accounts of something strange that had happened nearby.
A week before I had finally set to talk with Susan Sales, it had occured to me that I had never taken the statement literally.
"The sky riffled like cards in a chalk-white hand."
I had never been quite inclined to think of clouds shuffling physically, or of chalk-white hands parting them as though they were cards, even more strangely so because of how much I had obsessed over it. I suppose it had been effective enough to have not been important. At least not so until recently. I had decided once and for all why I find Susan Sales' paintings to be so personally effective, and the phrase so profound, and I am still uncertain as to which one has explained the other for me.
With all of the obsession within that moment five years ago concerning such a small statement, it had always arrested me in such a way that I hadn't thought to pick it apart or make it make sense. It had been a beautiful meaningful phrase she had written, and such a seemingly effortless one that it had distracted me from analysis or scrutiny. It had made a perfect kind of sense.
Proulx's phrase is bewitching due to its ability to conjure up the appropriate meaning and emotion for the reader without either spelling it out or spiralling off into metaphysics.
One could either go the simple "still life" (literal imagery) route: The white clouds moved through the big blue sky.
Or, one could present it in an ethereal (careless Pollock knock-off) way: cumulus pregnancies spread wide heavens vent, rejoicing waist of azure
Sales' paintings and Proulx's phrase do neither.
Although the sentence had been abstract enough for me to not fully consider a concrete understanding once and for all, it is still proper language, grammatically correct and written by one who understands structure. It is an intentionally crafted phrase, yet its combination of words achieve a total much larger than the sum of its parts, rather like any abstract art worth its salt.
But, if one were to see the amount of professional craft and structure of Sales' work, not just of the expression, but of the sheer physical form that it is stretched upon and covers, they would see the whole of it as being in the hands of someone who is careful, exacting, precise, mathematic, scientific. Were any of it framed, it would just look odd.
And while the art itself would fall under the category of abstract, its attention to detail is so minute, of such proper grammar and punctuation, that it stands just outside of the ether, an extremely difficult if not almost impossible stance to accomplish. Considering.
I consider nearly all abstract art to be a cheap cop-out, a refuge for bad and cowardly artists. And the higher the crude majority within one group, there is presented a finer rarity. Therefore, not only are her paintings exceptional for their being essentially good, they are granted an extra degree of buoyancy in being surrounded by so much shit.
And so...I like Susan Sales.
the interview
Duration: 48:11
Size: 44.1 MB
Format: mp3
Bit Rate: 128 kbps
further conversation
Duration: 54:48
Size: 50.2 MB
Format: mp3
Bit Rate: 128 kbps
[she had shown me how she crafts her paintings at this interval. no need to pass it on, really. wouldn't matter. i'm afraid you couldn't do it anyway. yet, if you were willing to try, might i suggest purchasing liquin and sandpaper. that would come in handy]
winding down
Duration: 12:01
Size: 11 MB
Format: mp3
Bit Rate: 128 kbps
