Her paintings draw on art history and what she calls “all things formal.” Each line she’s drawn or brushstroke she’s made, she says, is completely subconscious. She wants, as she wrote in a recent artist’s statement, “to remember things without language and explore their primal sensory essence.” But in her new show, artist Sue Chenoweth appears to just want to have fun.
“Spyhopping: Adventures with Sue Chenoweth and the Permanent Collection” at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art displays new paintings by Chenoweth alongside pieces by other artists from the museum’s own stash. In this diverse collection, Chenoweth, who teaches at the Metropolitan Arts Institute, is drawing on less formal inspiration, including board games (The Game of Goose, anyone?) and something called Spyhopping, an activity of gray whales involving jumping out of the ocean in order to nose around.
Tuesdays-Sundays. Starts: May 22. Continues through Sept. 19, 2010
