The Guardians, 2015
16 x 20 inches | egg tempera on panel
Private Collection
Susan McDonnell received both her Bachelor of Fine Arts and her Masters of Fine Arts from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.
Susan McDonnell’s paintings have been featured in solo and group exhibitions in galleries throughout the United States, including Sullivan Goss in Santa Barbara, HAUS Gallery/Brewery Project, the Jose Drudis-Bada Gallery, and Random Gallery in Los Angeles; Gallery Bergelli in Larkspur, Klaudia Marr gallery in Santa Fe; and Artbanque Gallery in Minneapolis. She lives in Minneapolis.
Many local residents divide their time between Santa Barbara and their second homes in other cities strewn across the continent. As summer turns to fall, they begin to think about returning to the warmer weather and slower pace of life that Santa Barbara offers.
“California on My Mind,” the current exhibition at Sullivan Goss: An American Gallery, calls them to do just that.
Historic and contemporary paintings, drawings and prints by artists from Southern California highlight the region’s history and mythology.
Coinciding with Women’s History Month in March, “Real Women: Realist Art by American Women” is on view through March 29 at Sullivan Goss-An American Gallery, 11 E. Anapamu St.
The works, which cover the last 90 years, feature drawing, oil painting, print-making and photography by local and regional artists along with national historical figures.
Among the artists in the exhibition are Susan McDonnell, Patricia Chidlaw, Leslie Lewis Sigler, Sarah Lamb and Dorothy Churchill-Johnson. Their works are shown here along with background information by Susan Bush, curator of contemporary art at the gallery.
American artist Susan McDonnell is a realist painter who paints her encounters of wildlife, and tells stories of nature through her paintings. She received 2nd prize in the INPRNT Traditional Art Category of the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize Award for her ‘Desert Guardians’ oil painting. While her work is clearly inspired by nature and animals, they are not simple studies of the animals she encounters.
Each piece Susan McDonnell has created includes a strong sense of storytelling.
With the country battered by the pandemic, a hotly contested election, the nation’s capitol invaded by rioters and an atmosphere marked by dread and hysteria, curators at Sullivan Goss-An American Gallery in downtown Santa Barbara felt this community could use a space for peace and contemplation.
Drawing from its artists’ studios, collector consignments and its own treasure vault, the gallery staff has assembled 16 works spanning from 1890 to today that invite a meditative or peaceful state of mind.
The exhibition is open for socially distant viewing through March 1. Gallery visits are limited to eight mask-wearing guests at a time. The exhibit is also available online.
In a year gone topsy-turvy, one tradition has held fast at Sullivan Goss-An American Gallery on East Anapamu Street: the 12th annual “100 GRAND” exhibition and sale, featuring 108 quality works of art for $1,000 or less.
The event continues through Dec. 28.
“The exhibition has become an incubator of emerging talent, an entryway for beginning collectors, a holiday celebration in the art community and an ever timely reminder that everyone’s life is improved by the addition of original works of art,” said Susan Bush, contemporary curator at the gallery.
Some people talk to animals. Not many listen though. That’s the problem,” says A.A. Milne from the popular book Winnie the Pooh. This quote has directly affected the new work of artist Susan McDonnell, who will be showcasing her magical, highly realistic animal and wildlife paintings at Sullivan Goss. While her past collections have explored the intri- cacies of still life, she slowly expanded to include living elements.
Recently, I asked folks to send stories about animals who had changed their lives. Artist Susan McDonnell sent me her story, told through a painting.
As an explanation for the painting, here is what she wrote:
“In the early 2000s, I lived in a house with a small garden pond. In the late Spring, a Red Darner dragonfly took up residency. I started taking photos at a distance and got closer and closer. Over time the dragonfly let me get within inches and then let me lightly touch its wings. This dragonfly showed up every morning around 10 and patrolled the pond until around 4 pm for about 4 months. We ‘visited’ every day and I spent a lot of time quietly observing and marveling at the dragonfly’s beauty. As you can see from the photo this dragonfly was a bit of a ham.”
This delightful show of five artists sharing a common interest is the product of curator Susan Bush’s observation that when it comes to eco-consciousness among contemporary artists, there’s something special about bears. Adonna Khare, Beth Van Hoesen, Susan McDonnell, Pamela Kendall Schiffer, and Nicole Strasburg may all have started out expressing their fascination with these extraordinary animals independently, but encountering the work together, the viewer is left with no choice but to accept that there’s now a distinct bear area in art.
Landscape and animal paintings are tough. Not tough to digest, but tough to review. Like portraits and landscapes, animal paintings are what they are—they depict, though not necessarily through ideas. They are meant to look a certain way. Mostly they are meant to entice a viewer by technique, use of color, or style.
A few years ago, Sullivan Goss curator Susan Bush began to notice the number of artists regularly depicting bears in their works. Artists had begun to choose bears as their subject matter not only to show the profound beauty of the animal but also to raise awareness to their fragile existence and habitat in North America.
The Contemporary Bear Area Artists exhibition aims to showcase the majestic North American bear while informing visitors of the effects that a growing human population, climate change and changes in hunting regulations have on bears.
Born in the depths of the great recession in 2008, this holiday group exhibition offers approximately 100 works of art all priced at $1,000 or less. The goal, according to curator Susan Bush, is to make quality work available to collectors who might not have the means to acquire something larger. While it began as a loose collection of work by people whom Bush knew and liked, regardless of whether or not they were represented by the gallery, 100 Grand has grown into a unique community event, the de facto salon of Santa Barbara’s art scene.
AN INCUBATOR OF EMERGING TALENT AND AN ENTRYWAY FOR BEGINNING COLLECTORS, the seventh annual 100 Grand exhibition is now on view at Sullivan Goss through January 31st. Featuring 100 quality works of art for $1,000 or less, the exhibition is a favorite for lookers and buyers during the holiday season.
“This show is an opportunity for local artists to get their work on our gallery walls. There are so many great artists in Santa Barbara, but we can only represent a handful,” shared Susan Bush, exhibition curator.
AN ANALYSIS OF THE ARTIST'S WORK
The allusion to Victorian botanical illustration in McDonnell's work is inescapable without being definitive. Botany was considered one of the few sciences genteel enough for Victorian ladies to pursue. It was thought to cultivate feminine virtues and to promote genderappropriate skills like gardening and decorating. McDonnell’s own attitude towards this history seems ambiguous at best. Her paintings all seem to have an edge – both a theatricality and a reverence for oddity that don’t conform to traditional notions of gentility. She also seems to imbue the decorative quality of her work with a sense of irony or defiance. By painting the rare and the bizarre in a traditionally decorative form and style, she subtly subverts the tradition. Painting natural curiosities in an Old World medium like egg tempera suggests a certain admiration for the original form. According to the artist, she likes tempera for the way that colors weave together like the threads in a woven cloth to create a unified field. She also likes the durability of the colors and the archival nature of the medium.
In the artist's words, "My paintings are combinations of what I perceive as real and underlying unseen elements of nature. My perceptions of nature are often defined by its patterns, delicacy and astonishingly exquisite details."
EDUCATION
1991 MFA Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA
1982 BFA Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA
EXHIBITIONS
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2020 A Quiet Nature, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2018 The Walls Became the World All Around, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2016 The World at Home, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2014 Curiouser and Curiouser!, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2007 Klaudia Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2004 ON Gallery, South Pasadena, CA
GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2019 Masterworks: The Artists of Sullivan Goss, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2018 Contemporary Bear Area Artists, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2017 Masterworks, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2016 You Are Here, Surrogate Gallery Projects, Pasadena, CA
2015 Mixed Nuts, Jose Drudis- Biada Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2014 Magical Realism, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2011-2018 100 Grand Show, Sullivan Goss, Santa Barbara, CA
2011 Summer Group Show, Gallery Bergelli, Larkspur, CA
2009 Insight/Inside LA, Jose Drudis-Biada Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2008 Contemporary Realism Invitational, Klaudia Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2008 Still Lifes, Objects and Other Narratives, Klaudia Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2005-2007 Contemporary Realism Invitational, Klaudia Marr Gallery, Santa Fe, NM
2007 Hausguests, HAUS Gallery/ Brewery Project, Los Angeles, CA
1996 Jose Drudis-Biada Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, CA
1996 Secret Society of Dog Art Random Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1988-1989 Artbanque Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
