A Portrait of the Artist: Susan La Mont

Susan La Mont lives and works in Northern Virginia, but she loves to paint New York City, her home town.

Born and raised in NYC, she attended Pratt Institute as an undergraduate. She studied painting, photography, drawing and printmaking, and found that painting and photography really captured her interests. As with many artists, she pays tribute to her anatomy class, taught by Sal Montana.

"I have a great appreciation for Sal Montana and his class. Until you understand what is going on under the skin in the human body, you can't draw it correctly," she said.

The results of her thorough understanding of human anatomy show clearly in her paintings, where she renders single or multiple figures to scale and in perfectly natural poses.

La Mont continued her training as an artist at Syracuse University where she received an MFA in Illustration and developed a narrative approach to painting, which remained her preferred medium of working.

"I develop my work in such a way that the viewer can elaborate on and suggest a story," said La Mont. "I come from a family of storytellers. Artists are visually oriented though. They often write better than they speak, but my artwork allows me to continue the storytelling tradition that I have inherited."

La Mont's family is not just adamant about storytelling. It also prizes education.

La Mont continued her studies in art beyond graduate school at Syracuse. She received a doctorate in higher education from George Mason University:

"My thesis focused on how artists come up with ideas for their artwork. I interviewed 35 different artists - all realists. Recurring themes in their responses were the desire to grab onto something that had profoundly influenced them. They talked about their experiences as if they were taking a snapshot. Many used the verb to capture," La Mont said.

La Mont, who uses photography in her own work, can speak at length about how much photography has changed the way people paint.

"Painting is about communication with the viewer," she said. "Artists need to get their idea across in a way that they viewer can grasp it right away. Art should never obscure the issue, but communicate it as clearly as possible."

Although her paintings are intricate and in her own words "present something that says something about complexity in the world," the statement about clarity sounds more like the modus operandi of a graphic designer, and the assumption is not far off from reality.

La Mont taught Communication or Graphic Design at Northern Virginia Community College for many years. She taught design and technical skills at a time when the profession was changing and technology began to be introduced in the classroom.

"Technology just became a new tool. The concepts remained the same," said La Mont who not only taught but also served as Program Head for Communication Design at the school. She also ran her own graphic design business named Flashpoint Production for some time.

"Sometimes I take elements from one painting and combine them with another in Photoshop," she reveals about her working process. "Sometimes I take a picture, blow it up and crop it as well. This is particularly true of my painting 'Waiting for the X10,' one of the New York City bus routes."

Returning to a discussion of her painting and the driving forces behind it, she talks at length about complexity in her work.

"Artists have always tried to portray what life is like around them. They document their own time," she said. "When I go to NYC, I see people on their cell phones, and it's both curious and humorous at the same time. My two paintings in the Arts Barn show during April and May, 'Heartland' and 'You are Here' represent the complexities of modern life. Ever since the advent of the personal computer and the explosion of the information age, one has to find one's way around information to get to where one needs to go."

Her painting "Heartland" depicts a tourist looking through a guidebook.

"So much is happening around her - people, reflections in the windows. The work embodies a typical person trying to make her way through the complexity," said LaMont, who photographed this instance on a trip to New York City.

"'You Are Here' reflects the diversity in the world," she said. "People are sitting in a coffee shop. A street performer has his back to the viewers but you can see the reaction on people's faces: they are smiling and engaged. There is an NYU student in the painting who seems really focused on the guy sitting next to her. The expression on her face captures the moment."

When La Mont was at Pratt she learned an imperative: always take a lot of pictures and don't wait for the perfect setup.

"I often go back to look at my photos and realize how intriguing some snapshots are," she said.

Among her favorite painters are Vermeer, Caravaggio - for the drama of light and dark, Monet - for his colors, Magritte - for his wacky sensibility and John Waterhouse, a Pre-Raphaelite painter. Contemporary influences include Alex Roulette, Catherine Murphy and Paul Senniak, who creates beautiful moods and a sense of mystery through his work.

La Mont's work has been exhibited nationally. Philip Perlstein juried a show she participated in, as well as Jack Beal, a local artist. Her work has been on display in over 13 states and the District of Columbia.

La Mont's work is on view at the Arts Barn through May 22, 2011.

To find out more about Susan La Mont, click here.