SPHERES

paintings by SUZANNE GOOCH

"Spheres are my favorite things to draw. To render a soft looking, precisely round, three dimensional form on a two dimensional surface is both challenging and rewarding.

The series began as an experiment. I wanted to test a fixative that would prevent my drawing from smearing when painting around it. I grabbed a small canvas  and drew a heavily shaded sphere with charcoal and chalk, sprayed it and put it aside. When I walked in the next day, the simplicity, strength and weight of the image inspired me to do more. I created eight more canvases just like it. As the compositions became larger and paint replaced charcoal and chalk, the crusty texture became reminiscent of a childhood memory, dragging my finger tips along our neighbor’s cinder block wall – gray, dry and raspy.

One day while sipping a cup of tea outside my studio, a passer by asked to enter and have a look. She gazed upon a large diptych for quite awhile. She emerged with a thoughtful smile upon her face and said “powerful and poetic”. Works for me!" ~ S. Gooch