D2
The Recorder Thursday, June 26, 2014
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Greenfield, Massachusetts
Image courtesy of Susan Valentine
“Peony Drenched,” oil on canvas, 71 inches by 30 inches.
‘Getting
in there’
Susan Valentine fills big
works with tiny details
Story by
Trish Crapo
L
ight streams through
the windows of Susan
Valentine’s new studio
in the Leverett Crafts
and Arts Center on
a recent afternoon early in June,
though the day is hot, the sky
steamy and nondescript. Ranged
on a long table are tubes of acrylic
paint, a tin of solvent and jar after
jar of brushes.
Valentine moved into her new
studio in April and has been busy
getting ready for her first exhibit
in the LCAC’s gallery space, which
opened June 19 and runs through
July 3. She’ll also be holding open
studio hours and a raffle to coincide.
Valentine and her daughter
painted the walls of the front
room a color whose name makes
Valentine smile as she says it:
“Mushroom Risotto.” That room
will serve as a small gallery with
paintings hung salon style in rows
on the walls. A larger room beyond
has built-in racks to store paintings, some of them quite large, and
a large open area for her easel and
worktable.
Readers who find that
Valentine’s work looks familiar
may have seen some of her paintings recently at the Hope & Olive,
where a solo show was on exhibit
for 12 weeks this spring. Most dramatic was a three-paneled painting
of hosta flowers, which, at 9.75 feet
long by 5 feet tall, took up most of
the restaurant’s back wall.
“The larger size moves people
because you feel like you’re in the
middle of it,” Valentine says.
“I was kind of on a campaign
to have people stop cutting their
hosta flowers,” Valentine says of
the painting’s subject matter, adding that most people assume, at
first, that the flower in the triptych
is a lily.
“People grow hostas for their
foliage and they think that the
flowers are trash but if you get in
there, that’s what they look like,”
she says.
“Getting in there” is what
Valentine likes to do. The perspective of some of her paintings gets
so close that, while her subjects
are still recognizable as flowers,
the composition becomes abstract.
“When you’re painting, it’s all
abstract,” Valentine said. “Well,
when I’m painting, because I am
into the minutiae of it. You don’t
paint the image, really, you paint
the little things that make up an
image.”
Valentine learned to paint by
Exhibit notes
Susan Valentine is holding a
gallery exhibit and open studio
hours at the Leverett Crafts and
Art Center, 13 Montague Road,
Leverett Center, from noon
to 8 p.m., Thursday through
Saturday. This started June 19
and runs through July 3, with a
“Windup Shindig” open house
on Thursday, July 3, 5 to 8 p.m.
She is also running a raffle
called “Art, for Pete’s Sake!”
to raise money for her cousin,
Peter Rizzo. Rizzo has inoperable liver cancer and has been
told by doctors that he has only
four or five months left to live,
Valentine writes on the fundraising site, YouCaring.com.
“I’d like to help him and his
family be a little less stretched
with medical expenses or
maybe have an adventure in
what precious time they’ve got
left as a family intact,” Valentine
writes.
The raffle winner will choose
one of five paintings that can be
seen on Valentine’s Facebook
page or on the fundraising
site. A second prize winner
will receive a framed, archival print. Raffle tickets can be
purchased from Valentine, on
her Facebook page and on the
fundraising site www.youcaring.
com. Here is a link to her page:
http://tinyurl.com/mz7os87
— TRISH CRAPO
Trish Crapo photo
Leverett artist Susan Valentine reaches for a brush in her new studio in the Leverett Crafts and Arts
Center. Her painting “Hadley Wedding on the Connecticut” can be seen behind her.
taking classes through Greenfield
Community College’s art program,
beginning in 2010.
“There are times I think,
‘Why didn’t I start this earlier?’”
Valentine, about to turn 60 at the
end of the month, says, gesturing
at the paintings on the walls. “Then
I think, ‘You did start earlier, you
just didn’t have a paintbrush in
your hand.’”
Valentine began her creative
journey behind a camera; she has
been photographing since her early
twenties. When Photoshop came
along, she experimented with altering her photos using the design
program’s paintbrush and smudge
tools.
“It didn’t occur to me for the
longest time to actually paint,” she
said.
Much of Valentine’s compositional work still happens
first through the camera’s lens.
Throughout the year, she is always
photographing images that draw
her in. To begin a painting, she’ll
project an image onto canvas and
map it out in graphite.
“I’ll do an under-painting that,
for the most part, will map out the
darks and the lights. So those are
fun, big strokes,” Valentine says.
“But pretty soon it gets into smaller details. It doesn’t happen in one
“Queen’s Greens,” oil on canvas, 46.5 inches by 33 inches.
Image courtesy of Susan Valentine
You don’t paint the image, really, you paint the little things that make up an image.”
Susan Valentine
Leverett artist
fell swoop.”
It can take weeks for Valentine
to complete a large painting.
Valentine, a resident of Leverett,
teaches yoga at The Hadley Yoga
Studio on Russell Street in Hadley
and offers graphic design services
in addition to concentrating on her
painting. Until recently, she was
still cutting hair, which she’s done
since she was 19. Yet, even with
everything else going on, Valentine
says she paints five days a week,
taking two off to give herself a
chance to recharge.
The canvas up on her
easel, “Hadley Wedding on the
Connecticut,” a large 48-inch-by30-inch landscape that shows two
women talking in the white folding
chairs left out after a wedding,
departs from Valentine’s usual process in that it is based on a photograph by Greenfield photographer
Matthew Cavanaugh. Valentine
had been drawn to the image when
one of her yoga students showed
her photographs of a wedding, she
said. Valentine has been posting
images of the canvas at the end of
each painting session, giving viewers a rare look at her process. The
easiest way to access the slideshow
is through her fine art website:
susanvalentineart.com. Then, look
for the “Works in Progress” link.
Lately, Valentine says she’s
been concentrating on the dark
river beyond the sunnier foregrounded scene where the two
women are seated.
“I’m trying to get some definition in what’s going on on the bank
and what’s going on in the back
foliage, and what’s going on in the
reflection and then wash it back
with something transparent to
really push it into the background,”
Valentine says.
It’s clear she’s eager to get to
work. She’s already setting out
paints, picking up brushes, ready
to begin.
Trish Crapo is a writer and photographer who
lives in Leyden. She can be reached at
tcrapo@me.com.