This coming November, Susan Lichtman, associate professor of Fine Arts, will be a featured artist at Swarthmore College’s List Gallery. She partnered with fellow artist Catherine Kehoe, who has been a visiting artist at Swarthmore College, Salve Regina University, Rhode Island College, Colby College, University of Arkansas at Fort Smith, Indiana University, Boston University School of Visual Arts and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Kehoe also teaches painting and drawing at the Massachusetts College of Art Design. She has taught various painting workshops in the United States as well as in Italy for a program of the Jerusalem Studio School.
Lichtman and Kehoe’s exhibition is named “Tone Poems and Shape Notes,” which will showcase their brushwork, geometric design and well-coordinated color. “We were paired up by the curator of the List Gallery at Swarthmore. She thought our work would complement each other. I had only met Catherine once, but I was a huge fan of her work. She has a great website called Powers of Observation all about perceptual painting. Coincidentally, I had invited her last year to teach a workshop this upcoming January at Brandeis about drawing and painting the head,” explained Lichtman, “I will be showing recent large oil paintings and small gouaches. These are domestic interiors with figures, which are loosely based on my house, family and friends.”
“I started drawing in high school, went to Brown University where I was a studio art major, and then went to Yale where I received my M.F.A. in painting. I have always painted domestic interiors, though the paintings have changed quite a bit over the years,” said Lichtman. A distinguished artist, Lichtman has exhibited her work at Galleria ISA, Montecastello di Vibio, PG Italy, Dartmouth College, Amherst College, Cornell University, Sarah Doyle Gallery and Brown University. She has also been regularly presented at Lenore Gray Gallery in Providence, Rhode Island and Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia.
Lichtman’s works have been reviewed in varied publications including Providence Journal, The New Art Examiner, American Artist, The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Boston Globe. She is also the winner of the Lewis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award, the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and faculty grants from Brandeis University.
The exhibition will showcase the artistic complementation of Kehoe and Lichtman. “Catherine came up with the title of the exhibition. She paints portraits and still life, and is primarily interested in the role of ‘shape’ in a painting language. She feels my paintings are more about ‘tone.’ I use a compressed tonal palette—limited in both hue and value. This allows me to evoke a specific quality of light, a time of day or season.”
The exhibit runs Nov. 6 through Dec. 6.
