Susan Barnett pushes fractured geometric shapes against a constant grid to create brightly colored, fluctuating figures that test our ability to create order from what we see. The tension between the flat, orderly grid and dynamic decagons that refuse to be still, belie the flat painting surface. Barnett is interested in creating images that symbolize the disjuncture between the personal systems we create to navigate our world and the confusion of paradigms with which the world presents us.

Artist's Statement

I am a painter with a background in cognitive and clinical psychology, and a fascination with mathematics, systems and memory. I graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor degree in Social Relations and went on to obtain a Masters in Psychology from the New School and an MFA from SMU.

I am interested in how memories are made and reconstituted over time. Our memories influence our choices, our past and present, yet a memory is not a stable entity. Every time we retrieve a particular memory it is slightly altered, glitches appear, holes emerge which must be filled, and it is transformed into a new version, memory 2.0. Yet we believe memory 2.0 is the original, unaffected by the exposure to the present.

Related to memory, I am interested in the patterns that exist beneath the surface of our lives, often acting as an unconscious director. I enjoy working with patterns that lay underneath the painting, emphasizing one aspect and hiding another.

My work rifts on the flexibility of memory and self and a porousness in the very thin membrane that separates our past and present, allowing a continual reshaping of self and our reality.

Most of my work is abstract, often geometric. In arranging shapes and colors to create a painting, I am accessing memories and experiences, transforming these data into visual relationships.

Conduit Gallery Exhibitions

• The Wave and the Water
• Mind Travel
• Per Diem
• Current and Alternate Realities
• Copenhagen
• Longitude/Latitude Part I
• Wild Things
• Games and Icons
• Recess
• Geometric Progression
• Small Works Group Exhibition