A Little Rock painter who has spent decades working out what a garden can hold
This month's Postcard Edition features Little Rock painter Susan Baker Chambers. If you're on the Melissa Mail Club list, her painting is the one on your October postcard. Here's more about Susan, her work, and the piece we chose.
Starting in the dirt
Susan describes her childhood as free-range: digging in the dirt, exploring the woods and spending hours in unsupervised play. She took her first painting class at the Arkansas Arts Center Museum School when she was twelve.
She earned a B.A. in Art from Rhodes College in 1974 and an M.F.A. in Painting from the University of Georgia at Athens in 1979. Since then she has completed residencies for the Arkansas Arts Council and taught as an adjunct at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, the University of Central Arkansas and Hendrix College.
Her work has been exhibited nationally and regionally. It's held in public and corporate collections including Carillon Importers (Absolut), the Central Arkansas Library System, the University of Arkansas Medical System, the Southeast Arkansas Arts and Science Center and Systematics. Susan and her husband live in Little Rock's Quapaw Quarter historic district, where they run Chambers Studio.
The garden as subject
For Susan, the garden is both the place she goes to make work and the subject she keeps returning to. Over the years that focus has grown into several series: Southern, home, folk, environmental and visionary gardens.
Many paintings start outdoors. She works directly from observation in gouache or acrylic, then takes those studies back to the studio, where they become larger paintings on canvas. She describes it as a fluid process that moves between what she sees and what she imagines.
The part she finds most exciting is composition. She treats it as a problem to solve, working out pattern, color and space until the painting holds together.
"The more I work in my garden, the more I learn about myself and my connection to the earth." — Susan Baker Chambers
Sassafras Autumn
Acrylic on canvas, 36" x 48"
About the October postcard
Sassafras Autumn
Acrylic on canvas, 36" x 48"
A gardener in a yellow sun hat crouches beside a bucket, trowel in hand, setting a small oak seedling into fresh soil. Her face is hidden under the brim, so the painting is about the work rather than the person doing it.
Around her, the garden is in its fall stage. Sassafras leaves have turned red. Pokeweed hangs heavy with berry stalks, beautyberry is covered in magenta clusters, and purple asters and orange zinnias fill the lower corners. A robin sits in the beautyberry, and monarchs move through at the edges.
I spend a lot of my own time in the garden, and what I noticed first is how closely this matches an Arkansas garden in October. Monarchs pass through the state on their fall migration around now. Beautyberry and pokeweed are what the birds are eating. And fall is a good time to plant a tree, which is exactly what she's painted someone doing.
The flat color and strong outlines show what Susan means about pattern and composition. Every leaf shape repeats and interlocks, and the whole canvas is filled without feeling crowded.
See more of Susan's work
You can see more of Susan's paintings and read about her garden series at susanbakerchambers.com.
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The Postcard Edition is brought to you by Melissa Cowper-Smith, Keller Williams Realty.