Tales from the Turnpike: Suzanne Laura Kammin

In Suzanne Laura Kammin’s abstract oil on panel paintings, hard-edged forms unite with transparent gestural brushwork. In the works featured at UMMA, the artist has employed a dynamic pallette ranging from vibrant reds and saturated yellows to an assortment of cool blues. Kammin states that she contrasts “smooth, minimal shapes of pure color against distressed and improvisatory passages to create a sense of expansiveness, magic and mystery.”

The layered lines that wind through the artist’s compositions are an essential unifying device and invite multiple associations. The lines may reference a maze of bent conduit containing essential utilities to keep us illuminated and connected or, as alluded to in the exhibition title, a system of concrete roadways and raised exit ramps that crisscross the urban landscape. For Kammin, the works “serve as a metaphor for a spiritual and psychological journey of growth and transformation.”

 

Suzanne Laura Kammin (American, born 1965)
top: In Transit, 2013
bottom: The New World, 2014
Both works: Oil on canvas, Courtesy of the artist