Susan Watson Knight: Lit from Within

Susan Watson Knight’s new collection of works, Lit from Within, marks a return to paint on cloth and the unusual synthesis of pigment with photography. The result from the Melbourne-based visual artist is a kinetic series of works that unites the use of form and repetition with unexpected colour harmonies.

The title of the new series takes its name from an exhibition of Amish quilts held at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1997. Susan’s encounter with these works was seminal; she was drawn as much to the history of the quilts as to their strict geometry and vibrant colour structure. The quilts were the focused artistic expression of individual women as objects of beauty and purpose; carefully designed, meticulously stitched and then gifted to family members.

A recent studio relocation unearthed the book that accompanied the 1997 exhibition and this ignited a creative starting point for Lit from Within. Susan found the Amish quilts compelling for several reasons, but most particularly because the designs were curiously prophetic. The modular arrangements of the quilts from a century ago were conceived and completed well before the colour field paintings that emerged in New York during the 1940s. The quilts were created and stitched by a closely-knit group of women who were isolated from ‘English’ culture and the reductionist fundamentals of Modernism.

Susan has responded to the precise geometries, delicate surfaces and luminous colour harmonies sewn by the Amish quilters. The quilting shapes in her new series have been exaggerated and take on an emblematic or symbolic characteristic, at times communicating solemnity and emotional stillness. The edges of the geometric shapes are softened to such an extent that some surfaces engage in optical trickery, but in every instance colour maintains the controlling hand, dictating the mood, potency and energy transmitted by these images.