Susanna Moller watercolors

This series of watercolor drawings by Susanna Moller explores different parts of human body in unnatural circumstances. She has drawn them in a way that provides the viewer with a variety of views on the process of aging and bleeding through different forms. These images are beautifully painted in vivid colors and the lines are defined.  Overall, the images draw attention through the utilization of intense colors especially the contrast between the browns and yellows. Some of her images provide us with an extensive view of foot or mouth while others only show individual toes. Some of them are contextualized such as the teeth; others are floating such as the eye image. In terms of size, the forms are painted on a small scale in different positions on a white canvas in a group as a collection.

As I view this work, my eyes are led over to the intense contrast of colors, which help reveal the texture of the different depicted forms. Interestingly, this piece looks appealing at first, mainly because of the utilized colors. But as soon as the objects depicted read as abnormal body parts, the colors become repulsive instead. The blues and reds are not indicative of the real life, and the fact that they are associated with the human body is appalling, mostly because one would not want to see such colors on his body. Moreover, the colors incorporated help enforce the idea of bleeding and perhaps aging. However, the very tension between the grotesque taste these images imply and their beautiful depiction creates an interesting work. This is true for most images but more specifically the eye image; despite the disturbing feelings it agitates as a result of the bleeding eye, many individuals may still want to observe it. The eyelashes form and texture as well as and the positioning of the eye ball accentuate the general abnormality of the eye. The reds here encourage some sort of disgust, and creates an interesting texture that renders the bleeding effective.

 While all the images are minimalist in size, and while I wish if they were drawn on a larger scale, I believe that some of them are more successful than others. The teeth set images for example are contextualized just because the teeth are situated within the gum. For this reason, the teeth images are more engaging to the audience and are more expressive of the human element. On the contrary, the eye image is floating without ground, which dehumanizes it. On the other hand, whereas the lines in some images are naturally flowing, the lines are cut sharp in the foot image. As a whole, the images are unified and contained. 

Olivia B.