Susan Grossman

New Drawings
October 13 - November 27, 2004

DFN Gallery is pleased to present New Drawings by Susan Grossman.  Grossman’s most recent charcoal and pastel drawings include large-scale views of downtown New York street life and quietly dramatic rural landscapes.

Susan Grossman’s mostly monochromatic images and black frames initially suggest photography, while capturing the kinetic energy of film.  As critic Gerard Haggerty wrote about Grossman’s drawings:

Writ large, their scale is cinematic.  …Like a single frame snipped out of a film, her works arrest an instant in an unfolding story.  The question of precisely what may happen next is left to the viewer’s imagination, and so her pictures linger in the mind.

Grossman’s subtle use of color guides the eye through the scene and helps propel the implied narrative.  Her urban and rural scenes juxtapose the human with the natural.  Traffic signs, telephone poles, and wires inhabit the landscapes, while clouds, sunlight, and wind are essential components of the city scenes. 

Grossman’s images, while autobiographical in the sense that they are culled from the artist’s own travels and experiences, are deliberately unspecific and allow for the viewer’s own interpretation.  In Blind Curve, for example, a country road disappearing into the overgrown landscape might suggest an uncertain future, while telephone wires may hint at a complicated past.  And Down River, a view of Lower Manhattan with a large cloud hovering above, can either be viewed as depicting what was lost or as providing a glimpse of reconstruction and future renewal.   

Susan Grossman graduated from Bennington College in 1981 and received her MFA from Brooklyn College.  Ms. Grossman has taught at City College of New York, and she maintains studios in Brooklyn and East Hampton.  Her work has been collected and exhibited by The New York Historical Society, and can be found in numerous private and corporate collections.