Statement of Practice 

In the rural area where I live there is a divisive cost that comes from the struggle for wider scope and inclusivity.  These are the stories of ordinary people, frayed cuffs and halos of light, non-traditional alignments of the pedestrian and the sublime. These are my neighbors, family, and friends. I work collaboratively with each sitter, mining conversations of dislocation and disturbance, aiming to give voice to personal narratives that resist forces that define identity. I am interested in subtle shifts of consciousness. 

Biography 

Susan Hoffer became interested in stories as a child, listening to her grandmother talk about growing up as an ethnic Gottscheer in what is now Slovenia. Susan’s interest in dislocation of rural people grew from these conversations. While these paintings recall and interrogate narrative images that have been around for centuries, they are crafted with her unique aesthetic.  She poses the question, “Who will define and normalize rural experience if they, themselves, are not willing to be vocal about what this experience is?” 

Susan has exhibited throughout the US with paintings in the permanent collection of the Albany Institute of History and Art, Albany, NY, and the Adirondack Experience Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, NY.