By Anne W. Semmes
Florence Suerig is an artist and a dancer. “I dance when I paint, and I use the rhythm of the dance,” she says. She likes jazz. “I move as an artist with the music.” Hence that large painting on view in her “Rhythm Dance” Exhibition at the Sorokin Gallery at 96 Greenwich Avenue that is called, “Charlie Parker Comes Home.”
Visiting Suerig in her art-filled backcountry home before the show, I saw that Charlie Parker painting, and a pair of paintings called “Dancer 1,” and “Dancer 2” also destined for the exhibit that opened November 19 and runs until January 5. Her paintings were a surprise. The last time I visited her studio years ago it was sculpture on display. But Suerig is an evolving artist, and intent on making her mark in her art.
“Basically,” she explains, “I take my brush and dip it into ink and make a mark. My marks are black on all my paint colors. So somewhere on my paintings is either a black line that’s gentle, or a black line that’s very strong. It’s my mark. It’s the only way that I can make my mark in life is to put it on my paintings.”
Her mark making started some 15 years ago, she tells. “I studied Japanese painting. Mark making calligraphy and Japanese calligraphy in particular. Karl and I have been to Japan several times.” Husband Karl is a retired surgeon busily engaged in exceptional wood working. “Our house has a somewhat country Adirondack Japanese influence,” she adds.
“But I left the Japanese theme,” she continues, “and I went more to making large marks that were important to me. It was sort of the language of the brush.” She credits a teacher in upstate New York for learning how to do large mark making. She credits wood working Karl for helping her craft her large painting brush.
“Karl found the piece of wood and I was collecting workmen’s gloves from the street.” At a workshop in Maine those gloves were indigo dyed and attached to that wooden stick. “I made the brush. It’s just absolutely wonderful. I do a dance with my brush with music and make huge marks.”
To fully understand her dance with her brush check out a video on Suerig’s website: https://florencesuerig.com/art-work/videos/2014-marks-here-and-now/1
Suerig’s evolution as an artist is intriguing. She began as an interior designer. “Then I was a weaver” she tells, “and then it was a quilt maker. Then I went from quilt making to ceramics. And then I was a painter.” She allots a decade or to each expression. The dancing came into her life at a sad time with the loss of her son. “Someone gave me a gift of a head massage.” While changing into a robe an advertisement on the wall caught her eye for the Moving Arts Collaborative – a dance group in Greenwich she has been with for over 20 years.
She also does Tai Chi. With all that movement she confesses “I’m not my own age. My joints don’t hurt. Nothing hurts.”
And Suerig has a new revelation – she’s woke on what she’s been doing with her paint brush. “I always thought painting was play. I never thought it was a serious part of my art.
To me, I was playing. And then someone the other day said, ‘Well, that’s what art is – you’re supposed to play.’ I thought to myself, yes, maybe painting is the one thing that I’ve ever done that I just think is play. It made me feel so good. I was playing. And then people started taking it [her painting] seriously, this one sold and that was sold and like everybody wants me to make one of these again. And I won’t sell it. It’s mine. I’ve played with it. Isn’t that funny? I’m going to go back to do more painting because when you’re free, there’s nothing that matters. With sculpture, everything mattered. Every moment mattered. Everything was important. This is just fun.”
