Transitioning explores Su Knoll Horty’s abstractionist works and creative process. For the first time, two of Horty’s most popular collections, Color Pops and Beautiful Transients, are displayed in tandem, highlighting their commonalities. In her earlier collection, Color Pops, Horty explores color and form, taking inspiration from the paint itself in the way the colors blend and evolve, to create pieces that allow a variety of interpretations as she “paints for pleasure” and revels in the unique shapes produced. In Horty’s later works, Beautiful Transients, the artist looks to the skies for atmospheric elements and creates more organized compositions in an exercise she describes as “bringing order to the chaos.” The two collections exemplify Horty’s metamorphosis as an artist while she savors the process of creating and evolves with her paintings.

For both collections, Horty uses a practiced technique to create her pieces. She begins by choosing colors and adding clove oil to her paints to extend the drying time. Once the paint connects with the canvas, Horty must act quickly to form the soft gradients that create the gently rolling organic shapes. For a moment, the paint flows naturally before Horty guides and blends the fluid color, creating both hard and blurred edges to bring form to the composition. The bright pigments swirl on the canvas, creating a billowing effect reminiscent of sunsets, blots of blood, and Petri dishes growing microscopic organisms. The artist intentionally leaves very little trace of her interventions, allowing the paint to speak for itself.

In the exhibition, pieces like Beautiful Transients 7 pair with Color Pops 27 and invite comparison. Their vivid, swirling hues of bright scarlet and deep burgundy complement each other. Yet, the geometric order of Beautiful Transients 7 and the organic soft curves of Color Pops 27 highlight their duality. Horty continues to incorporate dispersing organic clouds and other evolving shapes in both collections but imposes boundaries on the paint in her Beautiful Transients. It is here that her pieces take on a more organized composition, predetermined in her initial sketches, with pencil marks still visible on the canvas. Horty herself then becomes a part of her work, her style growing and changing with the paint on the canvas.

Transitioning invites the viewer to consider the ways in which it is a part of human nature to seek change and structure. The artist's investigation of color, form, shape, and nature makes for remarkable and poignant pieces. Horty’s Beautiful Transients and Color Pops remain a perfect example of unabashed creative exploration and experimentation.

Curatorial Statement by
Phoebe Caswell