Susan T. Rivers

Artist Statement

My photographs and mixed media explore the complicated interplay of pain and healing; the social and psychic wounds of modern life intersecting with moments of beauty that restore and nourish us. 

Rage and hatred are undermining our civil rights and bringing harm to us all, particularly the weakest and most vulnerable. Many respond by working to bring healing through social or political action. 

Amid this upheaval, I have photographed events and people in the Black Liberation Movement in Richmond and have been volunteering with the nonprofit Blessing Warriors to support families and individuals who have no home. In both cases I have witnessed injustice and racism, as well as the inspiring courage – and hope – of those working to promote racial and economic justice. 

Color, contrast, and texture are key components of my mixed-media work depicting the inherent roughness of seemingly serene images. 

My initial focus on digital documentary photography has included layering several images and adding paint or pastel to tell stories. I also developed a technique that involves printing the photographs on the reverse side of photo paper and then manipulating the wet print with water drops and salt to create an abstract. I am also exploring other media, such as ink, acrylic, watercolor, encaustic media, and collages applied to paper, wood, and canvas. 

Through continual experimentation and discovery, my works exhibit a wide range of styles. Yet, all driven by a common theme: Creative truth must embrace both the harmony and discord of our unpredictable existence.

Bio

Susan T. Rivers is a former Wall Street Journal editor and corporate communicator who has lived and worked in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. 

Born in 1956 in New York of Quebec immigrants, she earned a degree in photography at Trinity University, and won a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to photo document rural villages in France, Ireland and Quebec. She was a news reporter and editor for 30 years at several major news outlets; and occasionally freelanced as a photographer and illustrator. She eventually changed careers, shifting into corporate communications and serving financial institutions in Boston for over a decade. 

Deeply affected by her multicultural travel and troubled by the social and economic disparities she witnesses in urban America, she strives to unveil the complementary elements of pain and healing in our shared humanity.

susantriverscreative.com