ARTIST’S STATEMENT

My earliest influences come from growing up in a family business, Ivy School of Professional Art. My parents and their friends were artists and educators. In our home painting studio and darkroom and at Ivy I made art, took classes, and worked. Ivy began in 1960 and hosted art happenings. Performance art, abstraction, graffiti, and life drawing were my norm since childhood. My first camera was a vintage Olympus Pen W and when I was 12 I learned to shoot manually and print my own work. My family was unconventional and proud of it. These are powerful forces that make me who I am. Art is one way for me to express my activism.

Most of the art I’m making now originates with my iPad Pro and Apple Pencil stylus as my primary art tools. I start with a digital canvas that I paint or collage and working from a model, I add life drawings. When I finish a piece I either output the work onto fabric, paper, or another substrate, or show it as a digital work of art on a monitor. I prefer a life-size or larger scale and soft-to-the touch fabrics. All my editions are extremely limited.

Drawn from a live, nude, model, my style is graphic, sensual, and fluid. Sometimes it is tongue-in-cheek or whimsical. I create gestural drawings or paintings that convey a frankness and which feel intimate and natural. Powerful women. The women (and occasional men) come across as strong, decisive, confident, and unique individuals – this is my underlying narrative.

I work back and forth using either a monochrome neutral palette with colorful accents or a vivid palette. In my collages I incorporate my photos – which can be quirky, and play with scale, like my black cat in the shower with a figure superimposed. I shoot what I see around me: nature – a field of flowers, clouds, trees; San Francisco landmarks and architecture – bridges, signs, the sides of buildings, sidewalks, neighborhood icons like Sutro Tower; and my travels.

I edit my work vigorously to select just a few pieces that convey our everyday humanity and motivate people to embrace their human-ness. I like to stimulate a response. I want people to overcome discomfort about nudity as long as a nude female body remains controversial. I identify with my models and they become our shared story. My earlier work was more narrative, based on dreams and personal history, and it expressed rage. Now I want to show joie de vivre and a naked truth. It's important to me to show who we are and to fight to remain uncensored. I want my viewers to be stirred. They might experience a little poke in the gut. To feel the presence of strong women.

My subjects are naked but are completely comfortable in their skins. Are you? Do you want to be? There should be something liberating in seeing my work. Blunt. Nudity is not an issue. Body love is. Anecdotally, people have asked to model for me after seeing my work.

I’m continually inspired by a huge number of artists, living and long dead, famous and unknown, as well as my artist friends. I’m constantly discovering new artists to love, and old, even classical art like Greek sculpture. I’m stimulated by beautifully designed and produced decorative arts, fashion, and textiles, still and moving images, architecture, and the performing arts. I love to photograph patterns, shapes, color combinations, light, and shadow. Living in the Bay Area feeds my soul. Traveling opens my eyes and kindles my imagination.

BIOGRAPHY

Susan R. Kirshenbaum is a San Francisco-based figurative artist whose expressive, gestural work reflects a fresh, contemporary perspective on the female form that captures a moment and reflects an intimacy with her subjects. Kirshenbaum was encouraged as a child to pursue art. She grew up in a family of visual artists who started an art school, the Ivy School of Professional Art, in Pittsburgh, PA where she studied and worked throughout her early life. At 15 her father guided the family on an extensive art tour of Europe, initiating a life-long travel bug and love of museums. Since Ivy, she’s studied at SFAI, CCA, UC Berkeley Extension, Kala, City College, and in Girona, Spain.

In 2016, Kirshenbaum returned to full-time art making after a long hiatus, but she never lost sight of art as her center. Her career as a creative director for marketing and branding was closely connected to art. Over the years, Kirshenbaum has exhibited in group and solo shows in Pittsburgh, Sonoma County, and San Francisco. Her works are in collections nationally and internationally. Living and working in San Francisco, California since 1980, she’s taken breaks to live in Hawaii, NYC, and Spain. She can be found making art at her SOMA art studio or at her hilltop home with her cats and husband nearby.

INTERVIEW WITH THE ARTIST, MAY 2020

Why do you love drawing nudes?

I love drawing people - bodies, faces - all aspects of them. Art models generally pose nude unless you seek out clothed models, which I do occasionally. When you draw a nude model you can better see the shape and skeletal structure of their bodies - you can make out their angles, curves, and muscles, and where their weight is. Clothes are sometimes a hinderance since they are concealing. My drawing is about revealing, people feeling safe and self-confident in their bodies. It’s about being in a natural state. Drawing from life is personal and intimate. A conversation. A relationship. I have written quite a lot on this subject. My work is about empowerment, taking ownership of our bodies, and being a feminist. It’s also about accepting all genders , body love, and self-acceptance.

(I have no interest in drawing inanimate objects, still lives, landscapes, or work from photos or other people's works of art. I look at them and enjoy them too, and often photograph them.)

When I hire models privately I often ask them to pose partially clothed. The environment around them and what they are holding, leaning on, or wearing help my compositions. I like some draping and it is also more natural in our culture to see people at least partially dressed. I actually love drawing some clothes on a person too. So I like drawing people in any state of dress or undress. But I sometimes find it hard to show their form, movement, and posture if they have lots of clothes/layers on though.

Why do you prefer drawing digitally?

It's fast, clean, and easy. I need fewer materials. I can re-work, edit and make multiple variations and iterations like a printmaker. I drew non-digitally for the first 55+ years of my life. I used to drive around with a truckload full of art supplies because I used them all. When I work I switch around and combine a lot. So I use lots of materials in any one drawing session. I still draw and paint working with a wide assortment of materials, but they are digital. Now I am planning a series of gestural paintings of female models that I’ll create in sumi ink and brush, called Women Warriors. I am planning another series that will be a complete installation about invisibility. My Barbie series is part digital drawing, part life-sized traditional life drawing, part photography, and part installation art. Working digitally I can create elements of an installation on different substrates and in varied scales - applying my art to fabric, paper, wallpaper, glass, metal, and more.

What is your process when you draw?  

I don't use a set method. I often start with a quick directional gestural sketch positioned on the page - sometimes this is an amorphous shape that I work on top of. I am always layering and removing. I use my body a great deal when I’m drawing in a larger scale. I always try to stay loose. I look closely, look away, stand up, sit down, and shake my arm out. I focus and unfocus my eyes and occasionally hold up a finger or a pencil to I measure and check shapes and relationships in the composition. I try not to think but rather I act, moving very quickly and spontaneously. After so many years of practice, this feels right. Since most of the time these days I’m working on an iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil, I rely on the app use, Procreate, to video and document my drawing process. I suggest that you take a look at my art process videos on YouTube and Social Media. I also continue to modify the work after I've saved it as a digital original. This is the term I’ve coined to describe the work I make.

What do you look at?

The overall composition. The negative and positive shapes. The blocks of color and light. The motion and weight of the form, along with the personality, mood, and expression of the subject. Additionally I look for textures and patterns in the surrounding materials, the subject’s hair, skin, and any special features that reveal the model as an individual that I am trying to capture in that moment in time. And all the while I am listening to and talking the subject.

Interview by writer Melissa Baker, during Sheltering in Place, May 2020.