Artist's Statement for Hospital Series I and II

            In 1991, the year of my graduation from the Museum School, I was diagnosed with a large brain tumor.  I was psychotic for several days following surgery for the removal of the tumor and put in isolation in a psychiatric hospital in Boston.  There I lost the meaning of time and self.  The horror of abandonment is with me always, though with fortune, at times out of view.  I share this information equivocally because I do not want to put the work on crutches with logical summation or dismissal.

            Fifteen years later, in November of 2006, not long after moving from NYC to Holyoke, MA, I sprang a cerebral spinal fluid leak and nearly died several times from meningitis. I had three brain surgeries over the course of four months (Nov 2006-Feb 2007).  The trauma and chronic pain have realigned my life and committed me to my artwork.  The Menin-gites drawings were mostly made during my extended period of recovery from the meningitis.

            As an artist, I try to resist the cognitive encasement which drives so much of contemporary art, the result of the economic drive to market.  Art which pushes against the word, makes itself difficult to write about, is more likely to stay in the realm of the magical sublime, but also resists visibility, major fashion trends and exhibitions.  I’m a believer in Kandinsky’s assertion that the best art is made from necessity.  He infers that the making of art to market is tainted by the desire to please (a buyer, audience, culture, dealer) and that intention of this sort pollutes the pure act of expression, this tied to necessity.  This is why I’ve a propensity for naïve or what used to be called “Outsider Art”—the work of Artaud, Carlo, Darger, et. al., but which of late has been so co-opted to fashion, that even art students try to emulate it—thinking this is what will sell, trying to learn what can’t be.  Necessity of invention cannot be acquired by desire, only born.

Susan M. White