Susan Maddux
Los Angeles artist Susan Maddux uses origami-inspired folding to transform paintings, creating hybrid objects that exist in the space between painting and sculpture. She has a degree in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute, and worked professionally as a surface pattern designer for many years. In 2012, she began creating powerful pieces by gently folding paintings composed of repeating patterns, and forms that bring to mind a kimono or a cape began to appear. As a 4th generation hapa-Japanese born and raised in Hawaii with stints on the continent growing up, Maddux has a complex relationship with her heritage. This work explores reconnection with personal history and place through the transformation of material and the ritual of gesture.
susanmadduxstudio.com / Instagram @susanmadduxstudio
What joy or sadness is passed down through generations?
Much of my work in the last few years has been a very personal exploration and reconnection with my mixed Japanese heritage.
Created through an ink blot technique of painting and folding to create symmetrical patterning in dark Indigo, along with Surrealistic elements combined with tangled masses and blood-red forms that seem to flow from and around the mask-like visage, this piece is a meditation on the subconscious and biological influence that is transmitted from one generation to the next.