"Every summer my family and I spend August at the beach. While most people are busy swimming or tanning, I like to keep my hands occupied by painting. One day I got tired of lugging my gear around and getting sand everywhere that I started to sketch. They were very fast and crude sketches, but I really liked them. I also wanted to challenge and push myself by painting from memory and my imagination. And yes, some of the pieces have been wacky, but there you go, that is how it all evolved to become my new show...There is an edginess and there is more to each piece than first meets the eye.
Sometimes when I'm painting it's as if I'm not alone. Things start to happen I feel all sorts of buried emotions coming to the surface that I couldn't possibly describe in words. It's scary, it's exciting, it makes me feel alive." - Susan Rand, Aspire Metro 2023
"Susan Rand’s new work is an important figurative series depicting universal themes of interpersonal relationships rendered by an artist who keenly observes and intuits human dynamics.
In reductive environments, painted in Rand’s signature use of rich color and loose brushwork, anonymous human forms are interjected and portray themes of joy, inclusion, fear and longing.
These canvases and panels have been worked up, scraped down and left to reveal the renderings of an artist fully conversant in and enjoying her medium’s abilities. The surfaces seem to jump and play while supporting the new narrative of figures, sometimes solid, sometimes dissolving, in relationships that conjure at once carefree delight and anxious contemplation."
- Lee Findlay Potter, 2019