Suzan Frecon, Hardcover

Suzan Frecon features new paintings, which highlight the artist's ongoing exploration of the interaction of shape, color, texture, and light. Painted over long periods of time, these works are the result of a deliberative process guided by a deep understanding of color and the properties of paint. Frecon has been exploring the issues of horizontality and verticality, asymmetrical balances, and interacting arrangements of color for over five decades. The result is an ongoing dialogue that yields new and surprising paintings at every turn.

Frecon's knowledge of color is deeply rooted in art history; her selection of color brings with it an understanding of the scientific properties of pigments as well as their use by Renaissance painters. Esteemed poet and critic John Yau explores this inspiration in his illuminating essay, in which he teases out the connections between these bold abstract works and historic figurative paintings. Highlighting Frecon's interest in these paintings for their form and color rather than their narrative, Yau offers a new and intriguing way of looking at both present and past.

About author(s):For over five decades, American artist Suzan Frecon (b. 1941) has created abstract oil paintings and works on paper that are at once reductive and expressive. Made over long stretches of time, her canvases embody the durational activity of painting itself and invite the viewer's sustained attention: these, as the artist herself has noted, are "paintings that you experience."

John Yau is the author of seventeen books of poetry, four books of fiction, and two collections of criticism. His most recent book of poetry, Bijoux in the Dark, was published in 2018. He has received awards and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, and the Academy of American Poets, among others. He was the 2018 recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize.