Susan Marx is a painter who is in love with color and with paint.  She approaches painting with the thoughtful spontaneity of an Impressionist.  She carefully observes the natural world around her and then freely responds to it with spontaneity.

Marx paints en plein air, deriving inspiration direct inspiration from nature.   Her work brings back a School of Paris feeling in its use of pattern, color, shape, and intimacy. Her roots are clear, but her statement is both timely and personal.  Each canvas is an intellectual exercise in its use of space and an emotional response to the world she sees.  She has often been called a "painter's painter".

Her work is greatly influenced by the light of the Mediterranean, which she experienced in Israel where she lived for a while and in France, where she has traveled many times tracing the footsteps of the Impressionists, Post Impressionists and Fauves to see their world with her eyes.  She has been to Paris, Giverny, Auvers-sur-Oise, Arles, St. Remy-de-Provence, Aix-en-Provence, Collioure and Pont Avens.  In 2006 she attended a seminar for painters in Giverny and other places in Normandy where Monet painted.  In the summer of 2007 she returned to Arles and St. Remy to paint sites that Van Gogh painted.  In the summer of 2008, she returned to Giverny to paint again, and she painted Normandy in the spring of 2009.  In January 2010 she painted in the colorful Caribbean

Susan Marx received her formal training at Boston University where she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting.  She studied with David Aronson, Walter Murch, Robert Gwathmey and Karl Fortess.

Susan Marx is represented by the A. Jain Marunouchi Gallery, 24 West 57^th Street, New York, NY and by the Agora Gallery, 530 West 25^th Street, New York, NY and participates in their exhibitions. 

She exhibited paintings in the Gaelen Gallery East at the JCC in West Orange, NJ in the fall of 2008 and at The Tenth Muse in Maplewood, NJ in 2009.  She has paintings on view at Calima in Montclair, NJ, Mona Lisa Fine Arts in Maplewood, NJ, and The Right Angle, Hoboken, NJ.

Susan Marx has exhibited at the Fox Gallery, the Keane Mason Gallery and The Emerging Collector in New York and in New Jersey at the Robin Hutchins Gallery, the Korby Gallery, the Hait Gallery, Nitsa Fine Arts, the Marino Gallery, the Galen Gallery, The Art Gallery of South Orange (now the Pierro Gallery). Her work has been shown at the Salmagundi Club and the National Arts Club in New York City where she won an award, and in alumni show at Boston University Gallery.  She exhibited in Paris at the Musée des Duncan.  In Israel, she showed her work at the Museum of Printing Art in Safed and at the Artist's House in Jerusalem.  Her works are in private collections in the US, France, Switzerland and Israel.

She currently volunteers at the Newark Museum and the Montclair Art Museum.

Artist's Statement

My roots are in the Impressionists, the Expressionists and the Fauves, but my statement is timely and personal.  It is one of personal expression in reaction to the world I see.  Nature is my starting point, but not my end result.

I like to think that I draw in color.  Color, the use of warm and cool colors and their combinations are of extreme importance, as are my vibrant dynamic brushstrokes, my personal handwriting.  There is angst in the shapes and the line as the visual experience is turned into paint.  Every painting is a study in design, the placement of shapes on canvas.  The plastic elements are of the utmost importance to me.

I paint outside, en plein air, a la prima, for a spontaneous immediacy.  The work is not "corrected" afterwards in the studio.  My paintings are small, 16" x 20," so that while they are powerful, they are also intimate.  I work in acrylics on masonite board, which allows me to record color impressions quickly.

Someone once said that my work combines aspects of Monet, Van Gogh and Matisse. Nothing could have made me happier to hear.  It is important to have teachers, and it is also important to create a personal visual expression and style to share with the world.