Humboldt State University: First Street Gallery presents, My Heart’s a Little Fast, but Otherwise, Everything’s Fine: New paintings by Susanna Bluhm, on exhibit from October 2nd to November 4th, 2012. 

A Los Angeles native, Bluhm received a BA in Studio Art in 1998 from Humboldt State University and went on to earn MFA in Painting from University of Illinois. She now resides with her family in Seattle. She has exhibited her art nationally and internationally, including exhibitions in Berlin, Dublin, New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Washington D.C. 

Susanna Bluhm’s works blends abstraction and representation to create landscape environments that engage the viewer’s imagination and emotions. Bluhm utilizes many art materials, including, oil, acrylic, gouache, pencil, and colored pencil to create her drawings and paintings. Her style is painterly, incorporating a variety of painting techniques that selectively flatten and expand the depth of her environments.  

She avoids injecting deliberate narrative meaning into her work, instead preferring the viewer to have a subjective reaction from the act of looking. When creating these liminal spaces, she hopes to arouse the “sensations of things that might happen in a place, such as weather, touch, landscape, temperature, sex, or noise.” These paintings inspire personal interpretations by the viewer. 

The titles of her work often catch the attention of viewers as they have literary and poetic appeal. For example, one painting in the exhibition is titled, His eyes are like doves beside springs of water, bathed in milk. The title is drawn from the poem, The Songs of Songs of Solomon in The Old Testament. The painting is not a literal depiction of the poem, but rather Bluhm’s own personal interpretation—expressing her love for her family. 

Susanna Bluhm will present a Slide Lecture about her art on October 5th at Humboldt State University’s main campus in Arcata, California.  The lecture is free to the public and will be presented in Room 102 in the Art Building, HSU campus at 5 p.m.  

There will be a gallery reception for the artist, whichwill take place at HSU First Street Gallery on October 6, 2012 from 6 to 9 p.m. during Eureka’s Arts Alive program. The gallery is open Tuesday through Sunday from 12 to 5 p.m. and is located at 422 First Street, Eureka, California. Admission is free. Those planning group tours are encouraged to call ahead. For more information call 707-443-6363.

My various projects tend to be related in some way to my physical environments and experience of them. Also, they are experiments in creating new environments. An individual painting can become a new place in itself, with sensations of things that might happen in a place, such as weather, touch, landscape, temperature, sex, or noise. Abstract marks interact with more recognizable shapes, and a kind of narrative ensues. When talking or writing about my work, I stray from defining the narratives. Instead, I try to describe them as I see them; both as the person that made them and decided they make sense, and also as a witness to the end result.

By not providing a literal translation of the visual elements, I have relinquished some control over what is read into the paintings. The person viewing a painting deciphers it within his/her own frame of reference, and is invited to enable the very act of looking to generate the meaning.

I think of both painting and looking as pleasureful experiences.

Susanna Bluhm,
Autumn, 2012