By Miles Hilton
Jamestown artist Susan Gutierrez’s exhibit Paintings opened Friday at the Octagon Art Gallery at Patterson Library in Westfield. Among a crowd of local artists and art lovers, Gutierrez, a multimedia artist, unveiled richly-colored portraits of animals as well as city scenes reminiscent of the Impressionists. The exhibit will be on view until May 26th.
“Through my art, I try to capture the life and energy that surrounds us,” Gutierrez writes in her artist’s statement. Indeed, her urban scenes and some of her portraits of animals – such as ‘Trail Camera Cardinals,’ which spotlights two blurred birds in motion against a winter sky – seem to freeze not only a tableau, but its emotional effect on the artist.
“There was a story I wanted to tell,” Gutierrez shares when I ask her about her choice of works. It’s “the journey that I’ve been on, the memories that I have – a type of tree, an alleyway, a laugh, a joke”. That translation of personal, emotional impression comes across especially well in her paintings of alleyways and streetscapes, some of which are titled after the moments that left such an impression on the artist.
Those are “a newer series,” Gutierrez shares, and they are where the personal, ‘frozen-in-time’ quality of her work comes through mostly effectively. In many of them, the subject of the painting is framed by offset, broken circles Gutierrez says were inspired by coin-operated viewfinders. They give the pieces a “zeroed in” quality, “focused more on one part instead of a whole.” They also forcefully convey the subjective quality of memory – little things standing out against a blurred backdrop of recollection.
The cityscapes are one of two distinct sets of paintings in the exhibit, the other being portraits of animals. Crows, moths, butterflies, and birds fill Gutierrez’s canvasses, all painted with vibrant colors and strong lines. Gutierrez uses “mostly a palette knife,” giving her paintings an almost sculptural quality. The exhibit may be titled Paintings, but her work is truly multi-media. Many of her pieces are painted over a collage of recycled paper, including old maps, some of which reference the very places she paints in her work.
Gutierrez is also an art educator, teaching art and organizing artistic programs at The Resource Center. A proud member of the local artistic community, she sits on the board of the North Shore Arts Alliance and will be part of this year’s NSAA Art Trail Hub Crawl, which takes place over Memorial and Labor Day weekends. She can be found on Facebook and Instagram, or contacted at susanjgutierrez@outlook.com.