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Artist Statement:
New directions
From representational oil
based work to abstraction in
acrylics and digital medium.
After many years of figurative
approach to painting, my
interest gradually changed
into a total abstraction. I am
discovering a total new way of
seeing and perceiving, as well
as a re-learning curve with
the new materials.
It is a fresh new start where
the old methods and knowledge
are shaken and reformulated
with every new painting. With
much surprise, I discover my
own iconography, very
different than the symbolism I
used to do in my
representational work.
I see an influence of my
design work that I had as a
separate pursuit, maybe this
new adventure will blend
both....
Further Information
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Artist Exhibitions:
SOLO SHOWS
2007 Ramp Gallery-McLean
Project for the Arts,VA,USA.
2006 Atrium Gallery, The
MITRE Corporation, VA, USA.
1994 Museum of Art, Fort
Lauderdale, Florida ,USA.
1993 Cecilia Gonzales
Gallery, Lima, Peru.
1991 Galerie Mondiale,
Concord, Massachusetts, USA.
1986/1983/1981/1980/1979/1978
Galeria Forum, Lima, Peru.
...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
Coming Soon!
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Collections:
Coming Soon!
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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Oil Painter Maroe Susti
Cataloging the Human Experience
By Janet Scharp
“I always used to paint my life, my experiences, how change affected my life,” says McLean oil painter Maroe Susti. “Now, since I came to Virginia, I became interested in the outside world.” Born to an Italian family living in Lima, Peru, Maroe grew up in a multicultural environment. As an adult, she spent some time in Lima, but has lived in the United States since the mid-1980s, when she came to Miami for a visit and decided to stay.
After living in Miami for nine years, Maroe moved to Seattle, and later Atlanta. She came to Northern Virginia in 2000, now working here as a Senior Designer and Multimedia for MITRE Corporation by day and painting in her home studio at night. This year, Maroe is spending the month of December back in Lima, visiting her daughter and granddaughter. .
Maroe’s interest in art began at an early age. Her mother and aunt were both talented painters, and from the time Maroe was a small child the two women encouraged her in art. After high school, she earned a B.F.A. in Painting from the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Lima, Peru, followed by a Certificate in Visual Design from Scuola Politecnica di Design di Milano (considered the top school for Graphic Design in Italy at the time). Additional studies include a Multimedia Developer Certificate from Georgia Tech and various workshops.
Maroe describes her work as a mix of three different schools of painting: the Italian Renaissance Masters; the Surrealists, especially René Magritte; and the French Symbolists, including Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Odilon Redon, and Lucien Levy-Dhurmer. She also admires Dante Gabriel Rossetti, an English painter known for symbolism and paintings of women, and Gustav Klimt, a German artist especially known for his famous painting, “The Kiss.”
In January 2007, Maroe will display ten large oil paintings (most of which are 52” high and 72” wide) in a solo show, Multitudes, in the Ramp Gallery of the McLean Community Center, as part of the McLean Project for the Arts. The series revolves around the basic theme of interrelationships—humans living together, or fighting - snapshots of life happening at the same time. “All my paintings have symbols,” she says. She used to add symbols intentionally, but now the symbolism is inherent in the composition.
The only introspective painting in the series, “My Life,” presents a package partially covered with stamps and photos—reminders of her experiences and the places she has lived. Another painting, “Migration,” summarizes her concern with the outside world. According to Maroe, this painting of dark spots on an orange background represents an aerial view of the planet Earth, showing people moving: “It’s a map of the world made with people. People move, people migrate, like I did.”
The other Multitudes paintings portray recent world events and how these impacted her. Maroe is asking herself, “Would I be in any of these situations?” She wanted to catalog the men, women, and children on the earth. The crowds in the paintings depict people of many different races and cultures, but she sees each person in the crowd as an individual. “All these people are one, and yet, each is only one person,” she comments.
Each composition started with a story. For example, “Courtship” illustrates a news story about the Arkaskistan rules of courtship. The men are carrying off a cardboard woman. Because she was kidnapped, she is an unwilling participant and no longer a woman.
“Bystanders” represents the children in the world—big and little children from many different races. The school attack in Beslan, Russia, inspired this work. “Children are bystanders. They do what grown-ups tell them to do.”
“Crowd of Women” reverses the message of a news photo that showed Middle-Eastern women dressed in long robes and veils. In Maroe’s original painting, done mostly in blue, she imitated the picture of veiled women. Unhappy with this work, she painted a new one over it, depicting a group of happy, lightly clothed, free women.
In “Identity,” Maroe interprets a newspaper photo showing a crowd in Spain holding peace (PAZ in Spanish) signs after the terrorist bombing there. The blank, flesh-colored signs in Maroe’s painting have a special meaning. She imagines that the men are pondering, “I am of any value?”
“The Rage,” based on a picture of Middle East fighting, symbolizes all the fighting going on in the world. Maroe explains: “All over the world, men are fighting. If you look at this painting from eye level, you get into it and become one of the crowd. You could be in any of these paintings.”
Maroe has worked for almost three years on this series of allegories. Each painting takes about three months. She draws the composition first, using a charcoal pencil. She then redraws it with a thin, watery acrylic paint. Next, she paints the entire picture in one color with acrylic paint. Finally, she repaints with different layers of oil. She likes to create a rough background in the finished work.
The oil layers include thick paint and “transparencies.” For the transparency layers, she dilutes the color with a medium that makes the paint transparent and forms a glaze. This process gives the oil painting a depth that she cannot achieve with acrylic paint. She often adds retouching varnish after a layer of oil paint dries, before she adds another coat. The varnish restores the paint color, which may have dulled in drying.
As a change from the heavy subject matter in her Multitudes series, Maroe is currently creating 20” by 28” head-and-shoulder portraits in acrylic, using her coworkers at MITRE as models. She calls these works “action paintings.” They are done quickly and dry quickly, unlike the oil paintings, which can take months to dry.
Maroe has had numerous solo shows in Lima. In recent years, she has also displayed her work in group shows in Miami and as far away as Paris and Tokyo, Mexico, Venezuela, and Czechoslovakia. She received a prestigious Dalton Pen Merit Award in 2004. She also has had her work reproduced or mentioned in various publications, most recently in Communication Arts Magazine, Illustrator Annual 46, 2005.
For additional information on Maroe’s work, browse her Web site at www.sustigraphics.com or contact her at 703-506-8438 or maroes@sustigraphics.com.
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