Sunday, April 21, 2013

BEAUTY: Painting--Susan Siegel

New York artist Susan Siegel knows how to get to my heart. Long time readers of "Oh, By The Way" will have deduced by now that I am a sucker for animals behaving and dressing as humans. I love fables, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, and anything that shows an anthropomorphized view of creatures great and small. Siegel paints bucolic scenes of barnyard or farm animals, but in 18th century French country or court dress, à la Fragonard (she even has a cow on a swing!). In the 80s, there was a fantastic store in San Francisco called La Ville du Soleil which sold French housewares and objets, and every nook and corner of the store had life size mannequins with farm animal heads, all dressed like characters from a Mozart opera, just like a Siegel painting!

Her work reminds me of another artist I love, Sarah Higdon, previously here. Higdon's work is fairly clean, but I also love Siegel's very painterly, softly romantic, nearly Impressionistic style.


Top to bottom: Cow Swing; Family of Three; In Pink; Solitary Goat (Blue); untitled

More delightful images at her website:
http://susanlsiegel.com/

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