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Suzanne Caporael

b. 1949; lives and works in Stone Ridge, New York


Suzanne Caporael came to Tamarind with her head full of paintings. In the months leading up to her residency, she had seen several paintings that were previously familiar to her only in reproduction. She used the experience to create three small prints. For each of  these, the artist called upon a remembered detail from a Picasso, a Mondrian, and a Leger, and created a paean to the duration of memory.

In her much larger single print, the artist drew from her own working materials. Caporael is known for paintings that are quiet, intense compositions of only a few colors and shapes. The balance and configuration of her paintings is often developed through a contemplative and time consuming process of collage with cut paper. Her print for Tamarind is the exception; a “found work,” as she describes it. The working materials –colored scraps of newsprint clipped from The New York Times— were scattered on a table. A book lifted from the table of scraps left the central area open, a space of infinite possibility it seemed, that could be used to describe almost everything. Here, in the final print, that central space is defined as a clean white passage.

The artist worked with Master Printer Valpuri Remling and Apprentice Printer Candace Mallyn Corgan to translate a study she had made of the small moment and create a much larger print comprised of eight plates and one key stone. With its construction of multiple textures and inks reassembling the printed fragments she had discovered, the image comes full circle. One form of printed paper illuminates another.

 http://www.suzannecaporael.com/