Overlook is a series of abstract landscapes by Susan Maakestad, each distinct but unified through a common horizon line. The translucent glass illuminates the images from within, an effect the artist tries to achieve in her paintings on canvas. The work is a continuation of Maakestad’s earlier paintings derived from footage captured by traffic cameras found online. She is drawn to the changing weather conditions and long vistas she can observe without leaving her studio.
Though appearing like a natural landscape at first glance, Maakestad’s sweeping vistas are also informed by the built environment: highways, overpasses, interchanges. In these paintings, she contrasts the atmospheric haze of the sky with the geometry of the land below, transforming the urban landscape with diffuse atmosphere and exaggerated color. Maakestad reflects: “It is interesting that such an artificially constructed landscape as the airport is the location in Memphis where one is most acutely aware of the sky. There one sees clouds hovering above all our human fabrications, a reminder of the grandeur of nature.”
Susan Maakestad is an abstract painter whose work draws on her experience living in small towns in the Midwest, where the familiar landscape of flat rural places inspired her paintings. She moved to Memphis in 1997 to accept a teaching position at Memphis College of Art, where she taught until 2020. Maakestad was the recipient of a NEA fellowship from Arts Midwest in 1988, an ArtsAccelerator Grant from ArtsMemphis in 2013, and has received grants and awards from the UrbanArt Commission in Memphis and the Peoria Area Arts and Sciences Council.
