Bio
I started my career after graduating from Pratt Institute in 1969 working with pattern painting. From 1975 to 1981 I showed in New York with Susan Caldwell Gallery as well as Andre Zarre, and in Chicago with Jan Cicero. But soon my work was evolving out and the patterns were no longer confined to canvas. Chairs were incorporated and miscellaneous found objects. Doors were attached to the canvases in an attempt to expand painting's dimensionality. I was doing more installations and what I did were post-abstract landscapes that spot-lit my fascination with nature, specifically swamps, deserts, and the underwater world.
My work changed again in 1992 when I developed brain cancer. One day I was painting, the next I was in a coma. Slowly, and central to the recovery process, I began to paint again. Paint itself - its texture, its depth - rejuvenated me. I returned to the work I'd done shortly before my cancer and painted over it in an attempt, I guess, to erase the past. With an electric sander I swiped down through the layers of the past. Five years after my cancer I showed these paintings at the Cultural Center in Chicago in a show called "Fragile Landscapes."
- Susan Michod, 2008
Disaster Paintings Statement (link)
Deconstructed Body Statement (link)