Moving beyond the stain to a more fluid style of painting is what’s on Su Knoll Horty’s mind these days. The paint stain is still there during the inception of a painting, but it is more of a building block than a final presentation of schematic color. Gone too, for the moment, are the straight edges. Su is exploring fluidity, in all its measures: organic form, undulating movement, saturated ‘liquid’ color, and stylized gestural marks. It’s through fluidity that she finds color to be most expressive. The challenges of creating visual depth through vibrant color, along with subtle and not so subtle shifts in tone are the things exciting Su now in the studio, “The depth and unexpected form that comes from working with intense color is giving me great satisfaction and leading me into intriguing discoveries.”
Color relationships are still important to Su, as are tonal variations. With highly saturated pigments, building form through variation in tone is possible in new ways and presents a deeper ambiguity of space in the work. This ambiguity allows viewers to find what they will in the paintings. This is important for Su because she wants her viewers to find something they relate to in her work, making each viewing experience unique.
Su’s latest works offer an intriguing spectacle of color and form, which she calls ‘Color Pops’.