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VISION RICH WITH PURPOSE Exercising a sure hand and a sensitive eye, Susan Schary turns paint into radiant energies pulsing with life. Her brushes function as prisms through which light becomes a carnival of color. Using a rainbow of brilliant hues, she invents remarkable images of people, places and things. Richly rewarding representations of subjects she has studied with searching thoroughness, they have an existence all their own. Through portraits, figure paintings and still-lifes, Schary gives voice in the language of vision to feelings and thoughts no amount of words can match. Using her distinctive esthetic awareness as a lens, she brings the essence of her subjects into critical focus, allowing you and me to share in the joy of her discoveries. In addition, in all her work, design and expression are never separate. The more she has to say, the more adroitly she combines form and color into superbly unified compositions. While Schary is a very versatile painter, able to deal effectively with various themes, she is an absolute master of portraiture. She excels in this area because her pictures of faces are infinitely more than mere likeness. Many a facile art student can readily formulate the obvious equivalent of a simple snapshot. By contrast, Schary always avoids the obvious. Instead, she brings profound sensitivity and emotional maturity to the process of interpreting the nature and psychology of a given person as well as rendering his or her overt appearance. Thus, her portraits have depth and soul. As pictures with something to say they are quite likely to endure. One may well wonder how Schary acquired this gift. I think it's the result of her deep-rooted respect for life, a dedicated commitment to art and the accumulation of meaningful experience with many people in a variety of geographic locales, here at home as well as abroad. Schary also has another specialty no other painter I know can equal or surpass. This is her work as a trial reporter for news coverage on TV. With rare acumen, she captures the drama of the courtroom where witnesses testify, attorneys plead their case, judges preside and juries listen intently before retiring to ponder the fate of a defendant. Unlike lesser artists who make such scenes into vapid illustrations or overdone cartoons, Schary invests her pictures with profound compassion and sensitive understanding. Again and again, the faces of the figures reveal knots of anxiety, protracted tension and unexpected surprises experienced within themselves. By placing her talent at the service of audiences watching television she shows what the reality of a newsworthy legal proceeding is about, thus providing important information that would not otherwise be as well communicated to concerned citizenry. In a day and age when many artists are all too willing to exploit their abilities just for the sake of gaining approval from potential patrons, turning themselves into impersonal machines for producing studio commodities, Schary never forgets that art must, first and foremost, be made with heart. Because her ultimate loyalty is to the sanctity of nature and the integrity of her creative vision, she rejects compromise for the sake of easy success and superficial popularity. It's not an easy road to travel. On the other hand, it certainly helps explain why her work is as outstanding as it is.
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