Reviews
This is an excerpt from a review by Merle Molofsky which appeared in the journal of the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education March of 2009
Sue Burickson's show "Separations in the Silence: the red paintings", features 18 oil paintings consisting of a red background with a diamond shape consisting of two vertically separated triangles with thin vertical carving on their raised surface. Her paintings are spiritual meditations, and seem linked to two traditional art genres, to the yantra or mandala found in India and other Asian traditions, related also to American Indian sand painting, and to 20th century monochromatic explorations.
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The mandala tradition seems drawn on in that the dioamond shape, the "diamond heart" tradition in Buddhism, has particular meaning. Vajrayana, the diamond vehicle, values the heart-mind connection between teacher and disciple, and the diamond sutra teaching...Thus the diamond shape at the heart of a painting can evoke the transmission of enlightenment, the diamond heart path, which examines delusion and dualism, and brings mind and body together. The split in the diamond heart at the center of the painting therefore brings us to an understanding that dualism is delusion, that splits can be healed. There is the sacred and psychological aspect to the repetitive image of the split yet unified diamond in Burickson's work.
The other tradition, the monochromatic tradition of the 20th century is rich and diverse., ranging from the early 20th century Suprematist work of Kasimir Malevich, his black square, to the 1950s all white, all-black,all-red paintings of Robert Rauschenberg , the 1960 monochromes of Ad Reinhardt, work by motherwell, the 1960 mono blue,mono gold, and mono pink of Yves Klein and the later in the century the white on white paintings of Robert Ryman.
Burickson explores red. About 13 of her paintings are 18 inches square, with a 6x7 red center, and two larger paintings are 36 x 42. From painting to painting, the "horizon line" shifts, a slight demarcation within the red brushstrokes in relation to where the horizon line is implied and where the diamond heart "beats". As Burickson explores red, the viewer discovers blue. As the viewer changes position, the light seems to shift, and an underlying blue vaguely manifests in some of her paintings...
Burickson's paintings give us all our libidinal and aggrerssive associations with red, all the dynamic tensions of a vertical split, and all the focus and introspection of our diamond heart. Her sacred meditations become our internal psychic realities
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