SILVERMAN AND HAMILTON SQUARE CONDOMINIUM ASSOCIATION present
Candy Le Sueur: Where Dreams Land
Opening Reception: September 11, 2015, 7–9 p.m.
Hamilton Square
232 Pavonia Avenue
Jersey City, NJ 07302
201.434.8000
Exhibition on view in the lobby from September 11, 2015 — January 2, 2016.
Candy Le Sueur, Landed, 2013, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches
“Sea, sky, and land colliding are completely ingrained in my visual language. This just pours out of me. This is what I love to paint.” – Candy Le Sueur
SILVERMAN AND THE HAMILTON SQUARE CONDOMINIUMS ASSOCIATION present “Candy Le Sueur: Where Dreams Land,” curated by Brendan Carroll. This exhibition features nine large abstract landscape paintings that were created between 2012 and 2015. Each painting is oil on canvas. The exhibition also includes a series of small-scale prints and encaustics.
Candy Le Sueur’s evocative paintings suggest the natural world. The landscapes she depicts are rarely, if ever, still or recognizable. Light, atmosphere, and bravura paint-handling pervade. Paint alternates between viscous blasts and transparent washes, as each work seeks to strike a balance between solidity and effervescence. Part of the appeal of Le Sueur’s paintings is the threat that one of these forces may undo or overpower the other.
Although Le Sueur’s paintings give the impression of having been executed with great speed, in actuality, Le Sueur constructs her paintings over time, in a deliberate fashion. “I start with a wash of a solid color—usually a pale gray-blue—and let this dry for a day or more depending on the season. Then I apply a further layer of lighter and darker tones, which gives me some structure,” she explains. “Next, I build up the surface using a wet-to-wet technique, addressing one area of the canvas at a time. . . . This way of painting allows me to blend the color and soften where one area meets another. I push the paint around a lot.
Le Sueur paints as soon as she gets going in the morning, usually around 8:30 a.m. “I find my energy is best at that time,” says the artist. She paints for roughly six hours and then takes a break to eat and read. She returns to her studio in the early evening to paint from 4 to 6:30 p.m. She prefers silence to music when she paints. That said, if she needs some creative sparks, she listens to Van Morrison or Rodríguez, a folk musician from Detroit who was famous in South Africa.
When Le Sueur began her career, she concentrated her attention on the landscape of her native South Africa, but soon afterward, the images she constructed could not be identified by a specific region. One of the joys of viewing Le Sueur’s works is the myriad places they evoke: a windswept crag at the end of the world, a jagged coastline deluged by rain, a sunbaked plain enveloped by azure skies. Today, Le Sueur paints her landscapes from her studio in Jersey City. “I don’t need to be in the physical locale to paint my work,” says the artist. “My paintings are landscapes as I imagine them, relying on memory, intuition, and emotion.” Although Le Sueur’s style may recall, at first glance, the gestural brushwork of Abstract Expressionism, what emerges on repeat viewings is the artist’s strong affinity to Romanticism, the early-nineteenth-century artistic movement that turned to nature and the sublime as its primary sources of inspiration. Objectivity is eschewed in favor of poetic interpretation. Indeed, Le Sueur does not so much portray landscapes as she conjures them in the act of painting.
Le Sueur is an internationally recognized artist that has exhibited her work in South Africa, Switzerland, Germany, and United States. National Academy Museum, Jersey City Museum, and Drawing Rooms, among other venues, have exhibited her paintings, prints, and encaustics. Her work is included in several private collections both home and abroad. She received her Fine Arts Degree from University of Johannesburg in South Africa. She continued her studies at National Academy School in New York City. She was born in Kroonstad, South Africa, a small town in the center of the country, about 120 miles south of Johannesburg. She lives and works in Jersey City.
The exhibition will be on view at Hamilton Square Condominium Association from September 11, 2015 through January 2, 2016. For further information, please visit us at SILVERMAN or call 201-435-8000.
“Candy Le Sueur: Where Dreams Land” is the twenty-seventh exhibition that Brendan Carroll will organize for SILVERMAN. For additional information on the artist, go here: candylesueur.com.
SILVERMAN has presented the works of Kirk Bray, Anna Mogilevsky, Edward Fausty, Ali Harrington, Sara Wolfe, Anne Percoco, Shauna Finn, Melanie Vote, Paul Lempa, Fanny Allié, Michael Meadors, John A. Patterson, Charlotte Becket, Roger Sayre, Karina Aguilera Skvirsky, Tom McGlynn, Margaret Murphy, Valeri Larko, Tenesh Webber, Glenn Garver, Jennifer Krause Chapeau, Michelle Doll, Tim Heins, Megan Maloy, Laurie Riccadonna, Thomas John Carlson, Tim Daly, Ann Flaherty, Scott Taylor, Jason Seder, Sara Wolfe, Beth Gilfilen, Andrzej Lech, Hiroshi Kumagai, Victoria Calabro, Asha Ganpat, Darren Jones, Ryan Roa,Laura Napier, Risa Puno, Nyugen E. Smith, Amanda Thackray, and Kai Vierstra.
Transportation directions from Lower Manhattan to downtown Jersey City.
Brendan Carroll 