Ask Wednesday: Susan C. Price on her art

I first met Susan Price in 1966, when my new wife and I visited her family in San Diego, because her older brother had been a friend of mine at Yale. We've stayed in touch, had dinner with our spouses in October 2006.
    Susan is a self-described amateur artist, utterly without pretensions. She says that she's "trying to learn to paint." Well, we like her work so much that we asked Susie if we could show you some of it, perhaps in the course of an interview? [Our questions are in italics]:


When did you start to draw and paint and sculpt? How did you learn your various crafts?
    Drawing...began to draw...dont know when...early...somewhere in elementary school...i suppose, wanted to be able to draw clothes...so had to draw people
    Painting...uh maybe at a UC La Jolla extension class i took in high school. Dont remember learning either...actually. Learn...by doing and watching others. I've noticed the "magic" thinking i currently use in the weekly Painting Workshop i sometimes attend. i always want to know what, pen or paper size/shape or drawing element folks are using, because that surely is the key. I never envy/covet their colors, paint or brushes...maybe their brush work/stroke...Prefer my own sense of color...always.
    Sculpting...met a man (isnt that always how it starts) at a charity event at MOCA (LA Museum of Contemporary Art) who knew of a Sculpture workshop in a private home near UCLA, after bragging on myself (which is how the conversation began) i was terrified to actually have to show up and "put up" but the minute i entered i was "home" as Clare (Hunzakus-Steinberg) and Harry (Steinberg) were...and still are "the bomb" i quit becuase sculpture is heavy and hard to store...in an apartment, ran out of other folks yards, gardens and such...

We think you should show us some of your paintings, don't you?

    uh what's to say, nice nude, a pal in workshop, whom i revere, said , "well, i wonder what you are going to do with that upper right hand corner??" uh, well...NOTHING, anything i try now would totally goof this up, so i will leave it blank, with the few "hair strands" waving
    the next one...[below], uh...about me and color and...learning to see, and the old grey-beard is Carl Hertel, a teacher, and some of the newspaper articles are about global warming...and the flowers in the upper right were...a pretty color that i did not think i could capture in paint, so cut them out of some magazine

    the next one...actually has a title "X wont vote," a period when a young person i know was averring he would not vote, as it made no difference...that's his face (and his father's) upper left, some third world in torment young men in a car window (i like to paint from arresting photos in newspaper...i am old enough to still read one and retired enough to have the time to do so) middle has X's foot and his skateboard, below is part of a wall that was torn down in uh...Gaza at some point, and a man who was standing beside it with a goat and folks were using the opportunity to move food and supplies across a border and the "design" is my own version of Arabic, which i find beautiful (actual Arabic script, not my version) so, if ya need the message translated, its that there is plenty to be solved, worry about...concerned about and voting is the least we can all do (yeah, he votes...again...now :-) they all seem to grow up...)

    the next one...self portrait from about 10 years ago, had assignment "lifesize" on brown paper, part of the trick is how to see and paint your feet, when you are standing up how to get the paper and a mirror set up properly...lot of fun

    and the last one...uh small work on cardboard, from painting workshop...i hate to do heads, faces, hands, feet, they are sooo hard and if you screw them up, they can spoil the whole thing...all about the pattern and the color, fact that it is based on a nude model is incidental

Are you driven to "do art"? What drives you?
    hmmm, never been driven much to do anything, that's why i dont have a Tony award (also cus my talent is very minor), not driven to do much..., be a good girl, get the grades...but hate to practice just like to make pictures that please my senses of proportion, interest, color and "weird," the hope i will improve (without any effort...please)

Do you have a favorite work?
    i think this is my best painting

Tell us about it.
    i'm the little girl with the skirt, mom is above left, dad as a child and then as "himself" not just pulling the strings...but attached to me. that's about all i can explain

Who has influenced your work?
    my mother duh, she was an artist, i took art classes from Joseph Nyeri at Balboa Park as a child, UC at La Jolla- high school, Pitzer College- the late, great Carl Hertel, Ben Shawn, Picasso, Vlamink, Bonnard, my current long-suffering teacher, Joe Blaustein, everything i've ever seen, uh god is pretty good too

What's it like for you when you go to an art museum or gallery? Do you do that a lot?
    dont go much to museums or galleries, i usually speed thru, look closely (with hands held behind my back so the guards dont freak out) to see "how" the brushstrokes work, then head to the gift shop and/or cafe...sometimes i see stuff i wish i had thought of, sometimes i like...the colors...it was at the Chagall museum in the South of France that i decided what it takes to me to be an "artist":
    1. you have to have some command of your medium, the ability to get it to do what you dream of, and
    2. you should have something to say...sometimes all i have to say is, "I like color" or "God made the model pretty, what can i do with that, that is different?"

What are you trying to achieve when you start to work? Or does that question even make sense?
    uhhhhhh get it to the point i like it thoughtful inward looking, gee why would i want to do that?

What question (or questions) would you like to answer that we didn't ask?
    back to my reading (uh short stories DeLillo at the moment, while the golf game finishes...such is retired life)