Suzanne Stryk working on "The Green Fuse."
Suzanne Stryk has had a 30-year career as a visual artist, creating nature paintings and assemblages that capture spirit of place and inspire a sense of wonder. She has had several solo exhibitions throughout the United States, and her portfolios and related writings have been featured inTerrain.org, Orion, Ecotone and theKenyon Review.
Between 2011-13, Stryk logged hundreds of hours by car, foot and waterway to create “Notes on the State of Virginia,” a series of mixed media assemblages that revel in the beauty and history of Virginia’s diverse natural and culturally rich regions.
This extraordinary effort was inspired by Thomas Jefferson’s “Notes on the State of Virginia.” While the artwork toured the state in museums and galleries, Stryk got to work describing her experience, which became the book “The Middle of Somewhere: An Artist Explores the Nature of Virginia,” published just this year.
Stryk is a native of Chicago who came to Bristol, Virginia, when her husband Dan accepted a position as a professor of world literature and creative writing at Virginia Intermont College in the 1980s.
She says, “I loved to draw and paint as a teen — that, and trekking around the woods looking for birds, was how I personally entered the world of the arts and sciences.
“In the chapter from my book, ‘Dialogue on the Tides,’ I write the following after finding a fish skeleton on a beach. ‘No sooner did pen touch paper than all the names of bones once memorized slipped away, all the drawing techniques became instinctive. Eye and hand and mind worked together on autopilot, pen welding me to this marvel of the universe. What more could one want in this life?’
“Art can weld us to the living world in myriad ways, make us feel more alive and give us something to develop and refine throughout a lifetime. Why wouldn’t we want this for our children and how could it not create a better society?”
Stryk has been the recipient of a George Sugarman Foundation grant and a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellowship.
Her art has been shown in solo exhibits throughout the United States, including the Morris Museum of Art in Augusta, Georgia; the United States Botanic Garden, Washington, D.C.; The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum, Roanoke, Virginia; and Gallery 180: The Illinois Institute of Art, Chicago, Illinois. In 2005, a mid-career survey of her work, “Second Nature: The Art of Suzanne Stryk,” was organized by the William King Museum, an affiliate of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Stryk’s paintings are included in collections at the Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.; The David Brower Center, Berkeley, California; The National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C.; the D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson Art Collection, Dundee, Scotland; and the Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, Virginia.
“It’s fantastic to be recognized by my community. It means that something I’ve created has reached others in a meaningful way,” she says.
To learn more about Stryk, visit www.suzannestryk.com.
