Columbia City Paper

The next solo exhibition for Art + Cayce will be Suzy Scarborough’s intriguingly analytic romantic paintings.

Scarborough’s work represents three different major genres, namely abstract paintings, figurative images and landscapes. Scarborough’s abstracts use celestial spheres to connect abstract with geometry and reality. The circles symbolize the universe, earth and nature. The imaginary sphere of arbitrarily large radius, concentric with the Earth and rotating upon the same axis are just part of Scarborough’s game of painting nature from within. While in astronomy celestial spheres are often used as positioning and mapping tools, Scarborough uses them as guides for the viewer to find the inner consciousness of nature. Golden leaves connect the concentric circles and shapes, representing the interconnectedness of nature.

“I try to visualize the paradox of existence in the dimension of time: the way we experience life one moment at a time, yet perceive time passing according to our cultural concept of time. This concept of time,” Scarborough says, “is associated with the movement of the celestial spheres (empirical reality) and represented in my work by the use of symbols (including numbers, diagrams, computer circuit boards, etc.) I hope my paintings capture something of the feel of poetry in visual images.”

Young women represent Scarborough’s second genre. The large figurative images depict the beauty and elegance of the female figure and yet they all focus on the inner consciousness and how it is reflected on the outside.  The portrayed ladies are all surrounded by nature and seem both connected to each other and to the viewer. The artist’s usage of light colors and gold just adds to the glowing and balanced happiness of the figures that are really part of the background, part of nature. 

Scarborough’s landscapes are much more minimalistic then her other works. Colors are melting together and the landscape depicts only the strongest characteristics of the observed land and not the details. Water, sky and individual trees seem to inspire the painter, though sky and the water seem to meld into one on the canvas.

Scarborough’s gold leaf geometrics, abstract collage and figurative paintings will enchant all viewers who decide to step inside the Art + Cayce gallery, 1329 State St., until November 5. For more information, call: (803) 765-0838.

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