Susan R. Kirshenbaum

Artist Statement

Artist's Statement
My earliest influences come from growing up in a family business, the Ivy School of Professional Art. My parents and their friends were artists and educators. In our home painting studio and darkroom and at our school I made art, took classes, and worked. Ivy began in 1960 and hosted art happenings. Performance art, abstraction, graffiti, and life drawing were my norm since childhood. My first camera was a vintage Olympus Pen W and when I was 12 I learned to shoot manually and print my own work. My family was unconventional and proud of it. These are powerful forces that make me who I am. Art is one way for me to express my activism.
I always work from a live model, often on an iPad, where I edit my work vigorously to select just a few pieces that best convey a story and a mood. Ideally people observing my work will feel their own sense of human-ness. I want people to overcome discomfort about nudity as long as a nude body remains controversial. I identify with my models and they become our shared story. I want to show joie de vivre and a naked truth. It's important to me to express who we are and to fight to remain uncensored. I want my viewers to be stirred. They might experience a little poke in the gut. To feel the presence of strong women. My subjects are naked but are completely comfortable in their skins. Are you? Do you want to be? There should be something liberating in seeing my work. Nudity is not an issue. Body love is.