a non-profit gallery for the visual and performing arts

2833-A Hathaway Rd., Richmond, VA 23225
in the Stratford Hills Shopping Center

Gallery hours beginning Saturday, January 22, 2022:
Noon to 4pm, Tuesday - Sunday
Free and Open to the Public
Purchase artwork from our online store

Iris Mandala, 2021
Encaustic, collage, iris, overpainted panel, framed
11 x 10 inches

Red-Green Mandala, 2021
Encaustic, found objects, rust, organic material, framed
12 x 12 inches

Artist Statement

"Throughout my 50-year career as a painter, sculptor and printmaker, I have explored encaustic as a means to push the boundaries of my creative ideas, medium and process. My current body of work, Small Tapestries, is focused on creating encaustic assemblages embedded with torn scraps from previous drawings, monotypes, found objects, and organic material from my backyard.

Isolated in my home and studio since 2020, I have relied on materials I have available to create work that visually explores both my past history (children, pets, backyard, travels) and my concerns for a future dominated by disastrous climate changes and a worldwide covid pandemic.

My encaustic medium continues to challenge me as an artist and to offer insights as I weave translucent colors and images into tapestries of meaning. "

"… life is a tapestry we weave day by day with threads of different colors, some heavy and dark, others thin and bright, all the threads having their uses."
—Isabel Allende

"We don’t accomplish anything in the world alone, whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something."
—Sandra Day O’Connor

Biography

A painter and sculptor, Susanne K. Arnold exhibits her work regionally and nationally. She holds a BFA, an MA, and an MFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University. Honors include national artist grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundations. Solo exhibitions include the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Portsmouth Museum, Artspace Gallery and a retrospective in 2013 at the McLean Project for the Arts, McLean, Virginia. Her lecture on "Ephemeral Figures in Wax," was presented at two International Encaustic Conferences in Provincetown, MA.

Ms. Arnold has been exploring the encaustic medium since 1964 and has taught it since 1981. She has presented workshops throughout Virginia as an Artist-in-Education for the Virginia Commission for the Arts and has taught state-wide on a contractual basis. She is a member of Artspace, an artist-run gallery in Richmond, VA.