the range of emotion
54
WBM february 2018
M
OST ART LOVERS are
familiar with histori-cal
stories of artists
who held day jobs,
struggling to make
ends meet in order to
pursue their creative work. Less frequently
told are the stories of artists whose paral-lel
careers contributed meaningfully to,
and worked hand-in-hand with, their art
practice.
Mark Rothko, one of the best-known
color field painters in the world, taught
children at the Center Academy in
Brooklyn while he perfected and began
showing his now-renowned style. Rothko
once famously exclaimed, “I am here to
make you think. … I am not here to make
pretty pictures!” demonstrating the depths
to which his teaching impulse ran.
Susan Mauney, a watercolorist based in
Southport, spent 25 years as a practicing
psychotherapist. Her practice is fundamen-tal
to her approach as a painter and her
view of art making.
Mauney strives for a moody quality in her
paintings, a choice heavily influenced by
her experience working with people facing
complex personal challenges. And while
she maintains subdued color palettes and
muted, often morose, scenes in her work,
there is a consistent element of beauty,
either through small pops of pink and blue
paint, the addition of gold leafing, or a sun-rise
shining above the landscape.
art treatise
Susan Mauney’s watercolors explore the “middle of the feeling spectrum”
By Kathryn Manis
Above: Self portrait of the artist titled Portrait in a Pink Shirt, 29 x 21 inches, watercolor and gouache on paper. Right: Empty Porch #34,
24 x 21 inches, watercolor on paper.