Susan Mulcahy

Susan Mulcahy has been a practicing artist and educator for over 25 years. Originally from Buffalo, where she received a B.F.A. from Daemen College, she received her M.F.A. from Wayne State University, Detroit in 1975. She now lives in Nashville and is a Professor of Art at Volunteer State Community College.

Nashville area exhibitions include: Cheekwood Museum, Parthenon Museum, Tennessee State Museum, Zeitgeist Gallery , Sarratt Gallery at Vanderbilt University, Leu Gallery at Belmont University. She has also exhibited at the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Cincinnati Academy of Art and the University of Mobile. She was a founder and past president of the Visual Arts Alliance of Nashville (VAAN), a non-profit advocate for the arts in education and the community. She is currently serving on the Artists Advisory Council of the Frist Center for Visual Arts

I believe that spirit is not outside the physical but buried deep within it. Art, in all its forms, can be a means to get in touch with that spirit.

My abstract images are an exploration of the mysteries of life. In poetry, it is in the things that are not said, that truth lies: the space between the lines, the underlying rhythms and structures. My images operate in much the same way. If my audience is touched, it is through their own exploration.

I am often asked where these images come from. I would have to say that, through the act drawing, I find them. I don't have a vision in my mind as I begin. At most, there is a kind of conceptual or emotional direction in which I move. If the drawing becomes too self conscious, I put it aside until I am able to respond to it in a more honest way.

Fundamental to all my work is a philosophy that the process of art is analogous to living. It is an activity bound by time, molded by opportunity, choice and experience, and marked by failure and success.

s. mulcahy
2005