QUOTES FROM PRESS

SUSAN AMONS

APRIL 21, 2009

PORTLAND MUSEUM OF ART: NEW NATURAL HISTORIES 2008

PMA Show A Jewel, Naturallyby Phillip Isaacson, Maine Sunday Telegram, Mar 08
Susan Amons Sunset Night Herons is a tour de force of monotype touched with pastel.
Her great birds trailed by the ghosts of a second pressing move slowly across an
embryonic landscape. It is a reverie with not entirely benign connotations.
PORTLAND MUSEUM OF ART: NEW NATURAL HISTORIES 2008
by Susan Danly, Curator of Contemporary Art, Museum Magazine, Jan/Feb/Mar 2008
Inspired by science and armed with a keen eye for observation, many of Maines
contemporary artists are drawn to the world of natural history. The 25 works in this
exhibition each begin with references to older forms of scientific inquiry, but quickly
move into the realm of the modern in conception. artists like Joe Kievett and Susan
Amons, move away from realism toward abstraction. Like the famous French-American
artist, James Audubon, they also include elements that refer to the natural environment in
which their specimens live.
PORTLAND MUSEUM OF ART: NEW ACQUSITIONS 2008 2008-2009
Web essay by Susan Danly Curator of Contemporary Art
This special exhibition highlighting works of art acquired by the museum in 2008, will
feature more than 25 paintings, drawings, photographs, and prints.collecting highlights
include a major Morris Kantor, a sculpture and related drawing by Gretchen Lucchesi,
pen and ink sketches and a related monoprint by Susan Amons, prints by Rockwell Kent,
and a recent lithograph by Will BarnetIllustration of Single Egret II 2003,byAmons.
SACO MUSEUM: FIRST IMPRESSIONS: NEW WORK BY PEREGRINE PRESS
ARTISTS 2008 by Carl Little, Art New England, February / March 2009
Four glassed in cases in the middle gallery offer the next best thing to actual
demonstrations: an overview of printmaking techniques, from etching to woodcut. The
processes are highlighted through the work of Peregrine Press artists, including Susan
Amons, whose monotypes of birds are the more remarkable for knowing how they are
made.
SACO MUSEUM: FIRST IMPRESSIONS 2008
Catalogue essay By Linda Konheim Kramer, Nancy Graves Foundation, October 2008
Nature is also the subject of several other prints in the group. Each print of Susan
Amons monotype diptych Fire Crows III depicts a pair of crows, one dark and one
light. They fly against a pink and yellow burning sky in one panel and are perched on a
bare branch of a dead tree on the other.
MAINE STATEHOUSE GALLERIES: ARTS IN THE CAPITOL 2008
By Kerstin Gilg, Maine Arts Magazine, Maine Arts Commission, Spring 2008
The first exhibit of 2008 is Animal Prints, a selection of works from the
Biting & Scratching exhibition, on loan from the Center for Maine Contemporary Art,
in Rockport. Animal Prints consists of works by Susan Amons and Keith Rendall and

focuses on large scale prints that have animals as the subject matter. The Maine
printmakers in this show share an interest in pushing the boundaries of traditional print
techniques. The resulting woodcuts, etchings, and monotypes possess stunning beauty
and boldness.
CENTER FOR MAINE CONTEMPORARY ART: BITING & SCRATCHING 2007
By Britta Konau, Curator Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, Maine
Susan Amons experimentation with repeated motifs and spatial relationships, as well as
her great sense of color has earned her a following among her many print collectors. She
started making prints in 1988 and has continuously increased their size ever since,
extending her work to a mural-like scale.
WOMENS STUDIO WORKSHOP SUMMER ARTS INSTITUTE 2009
Catalogue by Ann Kalmbach 2009
Susan Amons has a degree in painting and printmaking form Massachusetts College of
Art in Boston. Susan exhibits regularly and is represented by Cheryl Pelavin Fine Arts,
NY and Mast Cove in Kennebunkport, Maine. The Portland Museum of Art has recently
acquired her work for their print collection.
Susan is a favorite teacher here at WSW, partly because shes a genius with this
technique, partly because she has a spectacular color sensibility and partly because
she is just fun and interesting! She has been to WSW many times during the winter,
working on her large-scale monoprints. Its not unusual for her to spend 12 hours on one
print.
ELAN FINE ARTS: SUSAN AMONS: FERAE NATURAE: WILD BY NATURE:
NEW MONOTYPES By Carl Little, Art New England Oct / Nov 2005
twenty five or so prints from the past three years reflect her ongoing fascination with
wild creatures, including herons, crows, sandpipers, snow geese, lynx and caribou. She
uses a variety of techniques, including monotype, drypoint, and transfer / chine colle.
Cut out mylar shapes are inked, printed, and reinked as color layers are built up. Amons
frequently works in a large format, joining several sheets to create wall size pieces that
bring to mind Asian screens. Her small scale pieces, such as the three chocolate lynx
drypoints (each measuring 12x18) are equally appealing.
The birds in Contentious Crows III (2005) fly about or perch on a twisting
branch; one can imagine their cacophony. Stately and alert, great blue herons stalking the
shallows for minnows (called schoolies) appear to float on the water, their plumage a
darker blue than the patterned sea. Other animals are accompanied by ghost doubles
like afterimages lending dynamism to the freizelike presentation. The decorative quality
of many of these works takes nothing away from their stunning presence.
A sketchbook displayed in a glass case speaks to Amons close study of nature.
She lives on a peninsula where she observes wildlife firsthand; she also camps in the
north woods in late summer, adding to her repertoire of animals. Such intimacy sustains
the authenticity of her vision.