Susan Wald: Capturing the Soul of Human Experience Through Art

Renowned for her dynamic work across painting, drawing, and printmaking, Susan Wald is a notable visual artist who was born on December 22, 1952, in Melbourne, Australia. Wald, who has had over twenty solo exhibitions and numerous group shows, is known for her unique style and investigation of deep topics like human mortality, emotional resonance, and the essence of life experience.

Born Esther Susan Widawski, (married name Mittelman) she then became Susan Esther Wald in 2004. She is the oldest of three daughters and the daughter of Polish Jewish refugees who moved to Australia after WWII. They sailed to Melbourne in 1949. Her rich cultural past and family experiences shape her work’s themes of memory, survival, and identity.

Wald earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Victoria College, Prahran, in 1991. She was awarded the Dean’s Acquisitive Prize for her artistic excellence. Cezanne, Goya, and Giacometti’s exquisite paintings influenced Wald’s early work. Frank Auerbach’s work shaped her paintings’ quality and vigor. She started using different textures and thicknesses of paint as her drawing became more critical.

Wald’s resolute belief in the power of painting as a medium capable of reflecting and speaking to the complexities of the twenty-first century. Painting, drawing, and printmaking have always helped her comprehend herself and the world. She seeks truths that resonate with herself and her spectators by discovering her own emotions, feelings, and experiences. Wald commented that “I find it challenging to connect with the experiences of the past and present in text, searching for an equivalent representation of painted emotions and spiritual depth”.

Wald’s Theatre Monotypes are admired by the Art Gallery of South Australia’s associate curator of prints and drawings, Maria Zagala. “The monotype allows her to translate the psychological revelation of the theatre into the symbolic language of light and dark”.  She says that Wald responds to theatre because of its metaphorical space. She depicts the human body in performance to explore its limits. Wald is skilled at capturing her subjects’ underlying emotions and psychology.

Well known art critic and writer Dr. Christopher Heathcote said of Wald’s drawings and paintings, “Some inner truth is externalized, is being pressed out”.  “Susan Wald handles the solitary nude as if it a vehicle for stating our mortality”.

Wald’s practice centers on bearing witness, a concept that manifests in her exploration of various subjects and environments from theater rehearsals, the figure, still life, abattoirs, and Lake Mungo’s vast vistas. Furthermore, revealing a connection in method and technique to her figurative drawings and paintings while also tapping into the rich tradition of Australian landscape painting.

Wald worked with Fraught Outfit and director Adena Jacobs in 2010. Drawing, painting, and printmaking were used to chronicle performances during this cooperation. The works that accompanied Sophocles’ Elektra were lauded for their ability to capture the essence of the experience. They captured the production’s emotional intensity and atmosphere beyond illustration, and the true feeling of the experience – the intense emotions and atmosphere, the way bodies moved unpredictably throughout the space.

Wald’s work is held in numerous Australian public and private collections, at the Australian National Gallery, the Australian Catholic University, the State Library of Victoria, Regional Galleries and Universities. Her artistic efforts have earned her the 1991 Dean’s Acquisitive Prize and the 2019 Print Commission of Australia. Other accomplishments include being a 2018 Mildura Australian Print Triennial, Australian Print Award nominee. She also received the Mornington Peninsula Prints, David Rosenthal, and Nexus Design Awards in 1992, 1990, and 1989.

Wald’s 2014 Metasenta Small Book, “Theatre Monoprints 2012-14,” strengthens her artistic legacy. From the fleeting moments of stage performances to the timeless landscapes that bear witness to the passage of time, her thought-provoking works inspire reflection on life’s complexities. A Melbourne artist with a global perspective, her thought-provoking works inspire and challenge norms, making her a respected visual artist.