About the Artist Susan Fried
I enjoy taking risks. The unexpected juxtaposition of colors, patterns, and textures sets me apart.
It wasn’t until I retired from the corporate world and began spending more time in Maine that I allowed my artistic side to flourish. It was always there. My offices over the years were filled with color and texture and wallpaper, but I hadn’t yet had the time to turn my energies to making art with a capital A. Now, I create coloristic multi-media collages made up of various types of paper, fabric, found objects, and paint.
Those collages cover a range of subject matter, but all have in common a sense of whimsy and wit and an underlying theme of romance. I create my own papers by embedding images, sometimes of my own art, onto rice paper, and use everything from antique book pages to napkins, wallpaper, images from Vogue and Country Life, as well as items found in haberdashery shops in NYC, Paris, London, and hardware stores in Tokyo.
It is the joy of assembling these items into fantastical arrangements and stories that drives me to create. I enjoy taking risks. The unexpected juxtaposition of colors, patterns, and textures sets me apart. I don’t adhere to the theory that the eye needs a place to rest – I invite you, the viewer, to keep looking and looking and looking.
I am inspired by the luxurious textiles and gleaming colors of Yves Saint Laurent’s Ballet Russe collection, the wardrobes of Elizabeth I and Madame de Pompadour, the colors of Matisse, les Fauves and Hockney, the imagery of the Greek myths, and the stories that surround me, stories that spark joy in the simple act of every day life.