How does one create vibrant, emotion-filled imagery of a place that never existed? For Philadelphia painter Becky Suss, it begins with introspection that leads to research and lands on creative expression.
This approach lends the backstory to The Dutch House, a solo exhibition (running through January 5, 2025) inspired by author Ann Patchett’s 2019 novel of the same name at The Baker Museum in Naples. The show was created at the invitation of Rachel Waldrop, director and curator of the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Tennessee, where the presentation had its debut before coming to Naples. Waldrop had met the artist 15 years ago and was well familiar with Suss’ oil canvases of large-scale interiors often inspired by literature. “She’s just one of those artists you keep thinking about and whose career I’d seen evolve,” says Waldrop. “So I jumped at the opportunity to work together.” For the ICA exhibition, Waldrop suggested Suss consider a topic with ties to Tennessee.
“My work is usually pretty autobiographical,” says Suss, “and my favorite American writers are Southern writers like Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, all the greats. I thought about them as I pondered a connection to Tennessee, and then I remembered Ann Patchett and her vivid imagery in The Dutch House came to mind.” The Nashville-based author’s 2019 novel (a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize) tells the story of a family living in a Gilded Age mansion in the Elkins Park community of Philadelphia, which is adjacent to the neighborhood where Suss grew up and currently lives in. Just like that, the artist had her connection.
“I was being asked to create a new body of work that related to Tennessee and here’s this novel written by somebody native to that land imagining a house that is very much native to the town I grew up in,” says Suss. “It was a perfect exchange.”
With her subject well-defined, Suss delved into researching the architectural details of the era, recalling the childhood homes of her friends—the moldings, wallcoverings, and the differences between the public and private spaces of those residences. She also wrote to Patchett to request her approval of the project. She got it with one condition: that the author be given the opportunity to purchase a painting, which she did. Once she started painting, Suss didn’t stop until she had 10 works that are notable for their size (some are as large as 15 feet in length), their use of unbalanced scale, details from the literary work, and the autobiographical contributions of the artist.
“Patchett says there’s no actual Dutch house, but we all have a Dutch house,” says Suss. “That’s how fiction works—the reader brings the context of their own life, their own history, and their own knowledge to form the imagery of what we’re reading about. That has always been true for me and my paintings as well.”
Story Credits:
Text by Kelley Marcellus
Photos courtesy of The Baker Museum/Artis–Naples
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