Matter and Sensibility in Suzie Pilon’s Work

A virtuoso of the woodcut, Canadian artist Suzie Pilon draws characteristically on refined sensibility and romanticism, as well as on a hardy sense of reality, in order to construct sophisticated landscapes.

One sees that Pilon has matured a knowledge of the heritage of twentieth century European modernist masters. Among well-assimilated influences, one may detect those of expressionist artists of reference- such as Emil Nolde or Jakob Steinhardt- with their dynamic sense of light and space.

Pilon delights in her very personal synthesis – in her own working-out – of the imprint that great expressionists have left on the collective artistic imagination.

The Istanbul series demonstrates an exquisite feeling for texture and atmosphere, allied to a solid spirit of image composition. The striations the woodcut medium so beautifully highlights, define -under Pilon’s chisel – air- waves, water movement and – touchingly – the melancholic breath of history and of present cultural uncertainty.

In the woodcut entitled Bosphorus, the marine blue of the enveloping sea is set in contrast against the Mountain, broodingly hiding in the dawn shadows, reminding us of course of the Chinese triad: sky, mountain, sea. The mastery of the medium is highlighted by the resolution of many shades of blue, thus conjuring the profound marine blue of the Bosphorus straights…

In City-scape 2 , the sky-mountain-water archetype is recaptured with opal sky and waves, profiling a black, brown and red, massive shoreline and mountain.

There emerges an interesting decorative white-hued shorthand of intricate traces, connoting a jumble of dwelling contours.

One is savouring here Suzy Pilon’s work, in her subtle and indirect evocation of certain refined graphic modes reminiscent of great modern masters, of the class of Paul Klee and German expressionists.

In the woodcut Haydarpasa RailwayTerminal – A Lost Treasure… representing the Haydarpasa heritage building – a once celebrated railway terminal- one may imagine the dizziness, the reeling feeling, suggested by the work of an apparently more pathological expressionist, such as Jakob Steinhardt.

The historical heritage is about to be demolished, and only desperate efforts of modern-day Don Quichotes might keep it alive for another day.

In Leaden Mid-day Sun– another atmospheric woodcut – Pilon demonstrates the off-hand ease with which she succeeds in connoting air temperature – scorching sunlight – conjuring a consummate sense of atmosphere.

The midday heat becomes very real for us, onlookers.

Pilon proves her wide-ranging mastery of engraving by also engaging the medium of etching. Her art book entitled Les Croix de chemins (Highway Crossroads)featuring poems by Michel X Côté, produced on Arches paper, succeeds in demonstrating the mastery of texture and variable surface profile, as strikingly as that of companion contour outline – in contrast to woodcuts, with their emphasis on line.

Quite surprisingly, colors such as ochre, yellow as well as various hues of pink diffidently come up at junctions of border outlines of nuances of black- and grey- textured areas or forms. They engage our interest – make us dream, perhaps – and again and again, invite us to re-examine the structure of the image.

The interest in territory – in its geographical and psychological aspects – is connoted by a wealth of notations, including signs such as color area, scratch, curve, wash, and a variety of dots: and thus, the engraver’s exploration may contribute to the spectator’s delight.

Montreal, December 2014