{{short description|American painter}} {{Infobox artist | honorific_prefix = | name = Susan Jane Walp | honorific_suffix = | image = | image_size = | alt = | caption = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | birth_name = | birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1948|09|07}} | birth_place = Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S. | death_date = | death_place = | resting_place = | resting_place_coordinates = | nationality = | education = Mount Holyoke College<br>New York Studio School | alma_mater = | known_for = Still life painting | notable_works = | style = | movement = | spouse = Michael Moore (1941-2014) | awards = Guggenheim Fellowship<br>American Academy of Arts and Letters<br>National Endowment for the Arts<br>National Academy of Design | elected = | patrons = | memorials = | website = [https://www.susanjanewalp.com/ Susan Jane Walp] | module = }}
'''Susan Jane Walp''' (born September 7, 1948) is an American artist known for small, contemplative still life paintings.<ref name="Sutphin19">Sutphin, Eric. [https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/aia-reviews/susan-jane-walp-62671/ "Susan Jane Walp,"] ''Art in America'', May 1, 2019. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref><ref name="Samet15">Samet, Jennifer. [https://hyperallergic.com/beer-with-a-painter-susan-jane-walp/ "Beer with a Painter: Susan Jane Walp,"] ''Hyperallergic'', October 10, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref><ref name="Marquardt95">Marquardt-Cherry, Janet. ''Objects of Personal Significance'', Kansas City, MO: Exhibits USA, Mid-American Arts Alliance, 1996.</ref><ref name="Smith15">Smith, Roberta. [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/arts/design/museum-gallery-listings-for-oct-9-15.html "Susan Jane Walp: Paintings on Paper,"] ''The New York Times'', October 15, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref> Critics describe her work as meditations on time, memory and mortality,<ref name="Barrette17">Barrette, Bill. "Motifs, Masters, and Metaphysics: Susan Jane Walp's Still Life(s)," ''Susan Jane Walp: Still Life'', Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College, 2017.</ref> celebrations of the complexities of seeing,<ref name="Whalley24">Whalley, Elizabeth. [https://twocoatsofpaint.com/2024/07/ying-li-and-susan-jane-walp-innovative-traditionalists.html "Ying Li and Susan Jane Walp: Innovative traditionalists,"] ''Two Coats of Paint'', July 16, 2024. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref> and homages to the dignity of natural and humble objects.<ref name="Sheck00">Sheck, Laurie. ''The Paintings of Susan Jane Walp'', San Francisco, CA: Hackett Freedman Gallery, 2000.</ref><ref name="Smith17">Smith, Nicola. [https://www.vnews.com/Susan-Walp-exhibits-paintings-at-Dartmouth-9320635 "Still Lifes Hold Deep Reservoir of Emotion,"] ''Valley News'', April 20, 2017. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref><ref name="Johnson03">Johnson, Ken. [https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/24/arts/art-in-review-susan-jane-walp.html?searchResultPosition=7 "Susan Jane Walp,"] ''The New York Times'', January 24, 2003. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref> Stephen Westfall commented, "the care and precision of her painting decisions are felt as a kind of spiritual penetration into the everyday and into the realm of awareness in art wherein the living speak with the dead or the otherwise absent."<ref name="Westfall07">Westfall, Stephen. ''Susan Jane Walp: Come Close'', New York, NY: Tibor de Nagy Gallery, 2007.</ref> thumb|right|upright=1.1|Susan Jane Walp, ''Melon Sliced Open on a Black Plate with Knife'', oil on linen, 10.375" x 10.125", 2015.
==Early life and education== Walp was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on September 7, 1948.<ref name="Samet15"/><ref name="Butler15">Butler, Sharon. [https://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2015/09/preview-susan-jane-walp-at-tibor-de-nagy.html "Preview: Susan Jane Walp at Tibor de Nagy,"] ''Two Coats of Paint'', September 4, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref> She studied art at Mount Holyoke College (BA, 1970) and a Boston University summer program, where she first worked with painter Lennart Anderson, a longtime mentor and friend, who taught her a painting approach grounded in tonal relationships.<ref name="Samet15"/><ref name="Barrette17"/> She undertook further studies at the New York Studio School, with Nicholas Carone, the Skowhegan School, and the Brooklyn College MFA program.<ref name="Barrette17"/><ref name="Samet15"/>
==Career== Walp has exhibited in solo shows at galleries including Fischbach and Tibor de Nagy in New York City, Pamela Salisbury in Hudson, New York,<ref name="Goodrich15">Goodrich, John. [https://www.artcritical.com/2015/10/05/john-goodrich-on-susan-jane-walp/ "Momentousness: The Still Life Paintings of Susan Jane Walp,"] ''Artcritical'', October 5, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref><ref name="Sutphin19"/><ref name="Whalley24"/> Hackett Freedman in San Francisco,<ref name="Sheck00"/> and Victoria Munroe in New York City and Boston.<ref name="Corbett03">Corbett, William. "Susan Walp Drawings: Victoria Munroe Gallery," ''ArtsMEDIA'', November 2003.</ref><ref name="McQuaid07">McQuaid, Cate. "Contemplative still lifes," ''The Boston Globe'', January 4, 2007.</ref> Her work has also appeared at the American Academy, Denver Art Museum, Jaffe-Friede Gallery of Dartmouth College, Naples Museum of Art and National Academy Museum, among other venues.<ref name="Barrette17"/><ref name="Sheck00"/> She is based in Vermont.<ref name="Samet15"/> ===Work and reception=== Critics link Walp's work to historical traditions such as American pragmatism and its emphasis on discipline, attention and craft, Roman frescoes and Northern European renaissance still lifes.<ref name="Sutphin19"/><ref name="Westfall07"/><ref name="Whalley24"/> Modern touchstones include the compositional order of Cézanne and the early Cubism of Braque and Juan Gris, Giorgio Morandi, and 20th-century American painters such as Charles Webster Hawthorne and Edwin Dickinson, who combined penetrating observation with an atmospheric, sometimes abstract, sense of space.<ref name="Johnson03"/><ref name="Smith17"/><ref name="Sutphin19"/> ''New York Times'' critic Ken Johnson wrote, "Walp is a modernist … She knows how to make paint do double duty in the service of both a cannily abbreviated illusionism and a delicate abstraction of paper-thin planes … how to let painterly gesture embody a sensual urgency that the imagery demurely guards."<ref name="Johnson03"/>
Walp typically works at a limited size in muted colors and in a square format more associated with abstraction.<ref name="Barrette17"/><ref name="Smith17"/><ref name="Yau22">Yau, John. [https://hyperallergic.com/the-hidden-poetry-of-everyday-life/ "Still Life and the Poetry of Place: The Hidden Poetry of Everyday Life,"] ''Hyperallergic'', September 28, 2022. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref> Her iconography is enigmatic, consisting of arrangements of objects without functional relationships to one another.<ref name="Barrette17"/><ref name="Smith17"/><ref name="Scott20">Scott, Andrea. [https://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/art/spotlight-nothing-but-flowers "(Nothing but) Flowers,"] ''The New Yorker'', August 7, 2020. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref> Her compositions frequently employ a complex geometry of secondary shapes and objects revolving around a central, often circular, element.<ref name="Westfall07"/><ref name="Barrette17"/><ref name="Paglia98">Paglia, Michael. [https://www.westword.com/arts-culture/object-lessons-5059049/ "Object Lessons,"] ''Westword'', September 10, 1998. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref> She sometimes compresses space in way that equalizes meticulously detailed objects and minimal, rougher backgrounds, creating a tension between intimate naturalism and artifice (e.g., ''Melon Sliced Open on a Black Plate with Knife'', 2015).<ref name="Whalley24"/><ref name="Sutphin19"/><ref name="Sheck00"/> ''Art in America'' critic Eric Sutphin remarked, "The modesty of Walp’s work is deceptive: her paintings demand the viewer’s complete attention in order to reveal their nuances … [they] reward those who take the time to look at them closely and deeply, their quiet stillness offering a moment of contemplative sanctuary."<ref name="Sutphin19"/>
===Recognition=== Walp was awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (2006), Bogliasco Center (2007), New York Creative Arts Public Service Program (1978) and National Endowment for the Arts (1977).<ref name="GUG">John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. [https://www.gf.org/fellows/susan-jane-walp Susan Jane Walp], Fellows. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref><ref name="Bogliasco">Bogliasco Center. [https://www.bfny.org/en/fellows/directory-of-fellows Directory of Fellows]. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref><ref name="NAM2">National Academy Museum. [https://nationalacademy.emuseum.com/people/3415/susan-jane-walp Susan Jane Walp], People. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref><ref name="Butler15"/> She received awards and grants from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2009, 2021) and National Academy of Design (2006, 2009).<ref name="NAM2"/> In 2017, she was the artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College.<ref name="DC">Dartmouth College. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQvK35XNZUU 2017 Artist-in-Residence Lecture], 2017. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref>
Walp's art is held in the public collections of the Hood Museum of Art, National Academy Museum and Sheldon Museum of Art, among others.<ref name="HMA">Hood Museum of Art. [https://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/search-collections?keywords=%22Susan%20Jane%20Walp%22&on_view_only=0&photos_only=0&downloads_only=0&orderby=early_date Susan Jane Walp], Collections. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref><ref name="NAM">National Academy Museum. [https://nationalacademy.emuseum.com/objects/8795/blueberries-in-a-green-candy-dish-with-tea-strainer?ctx=bb0f5f01edf2d28a17ca4050ba8e99713f35862e&idx=0 ''Blueberries in a Green Candy Dish with Tea Strainer'', Susan Jane Walp], Collections. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref><ref name="SMA">Sheldon Museum of Art. [https://emp-web-95.zetcom.ch/eMP/eMuseumPlus?service=direct/1/ResultListView/result.t2.artist_list.$TspTitleLink$0.link&sp=10&sp=Sartist&sp=SfilterDefinition&sp=0&sp=0&sp=3&sp=SsimpleList&sp=0&sp=Sdetail&sp=0&sp=F&sp=T&sp=19 Susan Jane Walp], Collections. Retrieved February 13, 2026.</ref>
==References== {{reflist}}
==External links== *[https://www.susanjanewalp.com/ Official website] *[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5rljr6Pmg8 Susan Jane Walp & Eleanor Ray in Conversation], New York Studio School, 2021 *[https://savvypainter.com/podcast/susan-walp/ Susan Jane Walp interview], ''Savvy Painter'', 2016 *[https://hyperallergic.com/beer-with-a-painter-susan-jane-walp/ Susan Jane Walp interview], ''Hyperallergic'', 2015 *[https://www.tibordenagy.com/artists/susan-jane-walp Susan Jane Walp], Tibor de Nagy
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Walp, Susan Jane}} Category:1948 births Category:Living people Category:21st-century American women painters Category:American realist painters Category:American still life painters Category:Mount Holyoke College alumni Category:Painters from Pennsylvania Category:Painters from Vermont Category:Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture alumni