Sue Fox challenges us to live in the present
Upon first glance, some of her works might look like paintings or digital art—Sue Fox’s recent work pushes the boundaries of collage, conjuring landscapes, color fields, and Escher-esque multidimensional environments.
Their complexity and sensitive color gradients defy their materiality; one could say that Fox’s approach to collage produces images that transcend the medium.
These meditative collages are influenced by a lifetime of creative experience and a strong philosophy. Growing up, she never regarded making art as a particularly special thing—it was just another thing to do.
“I grew up in Chicago, in the times where it was totally normal for your mother to humbly push you out the door, telling you to only come back at lunch time or when the street lights went on,” she tells us. “I obliged, most of the time, choosing roller skating, chasing geese in the cemetery, splashing in rain gutters, or stealthily trying to stalk the paletero man.”
“Sometimes though,” she continues, “I could convince my mother to stay inside and paint rocks with tempera paint, make a mess with homemade play doh, or use my ‘Muppet Babies’ coloring books. I had a fair amount of autonomy as a kid, but art making was something I just seemed to choose the most.”
Fox continued to make art throughout school, though it didn’t become her focus until college. “In high school, I always wanted to be the actress or the dancer. Unfortunately, I wasn’t particularly good at either of those things—but I had great passion for them. Realistically, I don’t think I was any better at art. It just became the thing I wanted to do the most.”
She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1997–2003. She started in the Sculpture department, had a brief foray in Fashion, and finally found her niche in the Fiber and Materials Studies department, which she remembers fondly as being “the department for art supply hoarders”.
She draws her inspiration from the human experience. “The good, the bad, and the ugly. We are a microcosm of the macrocosm. I practice Daoism, which is a philosophy and not a religion. Its fundamentals are a focus on living in the present moment, and the belief that we are all one (again, including all that is the good, the bad, and the ugly.) This all probably sounds lofty, heady, or all-out cheesy—but at the end of the day, that is exactly what my work is about, and what inspires me every day.”
She continues, “This world we live in is stressful, and sometimes downright scary. Everything seems difficult, frustrating...politics, the environment, social media, traffic, the constant push to go faster, smarter, and more efficient is taking me to my tipping point. I make art to escape the hard; to embrace a moment with the simplicity and complexity of color, and to understand that this everyday contrivance is powerful, both loud and quiet, expansive and contracting...and this is enough, enough for right now. It helps me to live in the present.”
Fox has a variety of materials and processes in her wheelhouse, but recently she has been using acrylic and collage. She is continuing work on her “Color Meditation” series, and looking forward to a break from exhibiting.
“It has been a crazy year for me, and I have just finished show after show. At this moment, I don’t have any shows on the horizon that I know of, which is kind of great because I would really just like to spend more time in the studio right now, without the impending stress of deadlines.”
For someone who makes such amazing work, she has a great deal of humility, telling us “I just really love making art, and I hope that I can do it for the rest of my life, and I hope that if there is something/anything that makes others happy that they do that thing, and that they do it for the rest of their life. Who cares if you are any good or not—it sure as heck hasn’t stopped me.”
Check out her work on her website at mssuefox.com and follow her on Instagram @suefoxart to keep with her latest work and exhibitions.