Artist Spotlight: Susannah Carson

In this interview, Susannah opens up about her deep love for art, antiques, and literature. Her latest works—featured in the September 19th Poise show—draw inspiration from fashion and storytelling. Read on to discover what fuels her creativity, how she curates, and the influences that have shaped her as an artist today.



How did you become an artist? Who or what have been your biggest influences?

My background is in academia, and after several master’s degrees both here and in France, and no less than a doctorate from Yale, I was on track to become a professor of French and English literature. My mentor and second father, the great Harold Bloom, told me time and again how much academia had changed over his decades being such an integral part of it, and he confessed that if he had had to do it again at the time then he would have done something else entirely. He advised me to get out while I still could, and so I finished my dissertation and then published two books of “popular” literary criticism (one on Jane Austen and one on Shakespeare). At the same time, I inherited my mother’s antique business and with her help began to deepen my knowledge maker’s marks, decorative styles, and the history of everyday life through its objects.

I only began to paint about 6 summers ago when a British friend was visiting and we decided to go to an estate sale. On the drive, he told me all about his art collection. When we arrived at the sale, it was mostly dusty junk, but there were a few antique oval frames, and I had the passing thought that one could do something rather curious and startling by painting oversized eyes in them, in a nod to the Georgian tradition of tiny jeweled Lover’s Eyes. The idea persisted, and I went back the next day to buy the frames, painted them, put them online, and they sold immediately. The rest, as they say, is history…(in this case, art history). 

In short, I like to make art that has an element of story to it, and that somehow feels like it could come from the world of a historical novel.



What is a fun or unexpected fact about yourself that the audience may not know?

I met my husband five years ago on an obsolete dating site on a day that happened to be Valentine’s Day, and we got married in a tiny church with my tiny dog, Agatha, as bridesmaid precisely one year later. No one could be as unalike as we are, with my intelligentsia bourgeoisie and love of tea and macarons and his life-smart, plaid-shirted, steak-bbq-ing, kind-hearted redneckery, but we balance each other perfectly.

How does your love for travel and literature show up in your artwork now?

This collection is a series of oil paintings in rather graphic, stylized compositions of my favorite heroines. It includes La Princesse de Cleves from the 1678 eponymous “nouvelle historique” by Madame de Lafayette (which featured in three master’s theses and my dissertation) – she’s a beautiful character full of inwardness, passion, and restraint, and the novel is commonly characterized as the first psychological novel. Ourika, also from an eponymous novel (by Claire de Duras in 1823, published in France shortly after Jane Austen was published in England), is a tragic heroine whose heart and mind are boundless but whose life is limited in society by the color of her skin (also from my dissertation).



The Heroines collection also includes Lucy Honeychurch from “A Room with a View”, Flora Poste from “Cold Comfort Farm”, and Lady Caroline Dester from “An Enchanted April”, which are all both exquisitely crafted novels and wonderful heart-warming movies that my mother and I loved to watch together.

What was the most difficult obstacle to overcome during your artistic journey, and how did you overcome it?

Figuring out how to combine the three pillars of Literature, Antiques, and Art in one life, and in one profession!



Tell us about the pieces you're showing in Fashion - what inspired them? How does Fashion (or other outside factors related to fashion ex: trends, antiques, etc.) influence your work as an artist? Is it an inspiration or perspective?

The Heroines are romantic but graphic oil illustrations which rely heavily on silhouette and shape – as shown in their dress – which captures something of their character and their story. La Princesse in her restrictive bodice above a bell skirt in the light tones of her physical and spiritual beauty; Lucy in the Edwardian white dress of purity, with a touch of romance to it; Lady Caroline in the fashionable flowing Art Deco couture with her irresistible elegance that she couldn’t escape from; Ourika in the traditional European dress and bonnet that couldn’t contain her spirit; and Flora Poste in her jaunty, practical, tidy clothing holding her Bible, “The Book of Higher Common Sense”.