Key West The Newspaper

For more than twenty years, painter Susan Sugar’s gaze has been drawn to the summer sky and sea, a subject Sugar says she can never imagine tiring of. On Tuesday, March 1, from 6pm-8pm, Salt Gallery at Salt Island Provisions on 830 Fleming Street welcomes the public to preview her new body of work, “a handful of skies.”

In this new body of work, there is no land in sight. She speaks of the work as music, as dance. The exhibit is made up of small watercolors painted on site, and large oils that come to life in her studio, a composite of the watercolor studies and her strong visceral memory of place.

Sugar fell in love with Key West’s dramatic skies in 1982. Since then, she has split her time between the island and New York City. In 1995, she transitioned from her career as a dancer to a painter.

“I felt a deep desire to express what moves me most, but in a new form,” she says. “I still feel that I am dancing…on canvas.”

Sugar’s dance remains apparent in her new collection of watercolors and oils. In her poised and poetic way, Sugar reveals her inner landscape combined with light and space at dusk and dawn. Her work is at once visceral and expansive, tumultuous and moody…. a dance of light and air and movement at dawn and dusk in summer when the skies are most dramatic.

“Most of us see the quality of light in Key West but Susan feels it. Her wash of color and texture expresses a dreamlike quality that reminds us why love this island,” says Jeffrey Cardenas, the new proprietor of the Fleming Street shop and gallery.

Cardenas will feature a new artist each month at SALT Gallery; Sugar’s work will remain on display throughout March, accompanied by a limited edition catalogue. For more information, call 305.896.2980 or visit SusanSugar.net.

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