Susan Jane Walp (born September 7, 1948) is an American artist known for small, contemplative still life paintings.Sutphin, Eric. "Susan Jane Walp," Art in America, May 1, 2019. Retrieved February 13, 2026.Samet, Jennifer. "Beer with a Painter: Susan Jane Walp," Hyperallergic, October 10, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2026.Marquardt-Cherry, Janet. Objects of Personal Significance, Kansas City, MO: Exhibits USA, Mid-American Arts Alliance, 1996.Smith, Roberta. "Susan Jane Walp: Paintings on Paper," The New York Times, October 15, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2026. Critics describe her work as meditations on time, memory and mortality,Barrette, Bill. "Motifs, Masters, and Metaphysics: Susan Jane Walp's Still Life(s)," Susan Jane Walp: Still Life, Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College, 2017. celebrations of the complexities of seeing,Whalley, Elizabeth. "Ying Li and Susan Jane Walp: Innovative traditionalists," Two Coats of Paint, July 16, 2024. Retrieved February 13, 2026. and homages to the dignity of natural and humble objects.Sheck, Laurie. The Paintings of Susan Jane Walp, San Francisco, CA: Hackett Freedman Gallery, 2000.Smith, Nicola. "Still Lifes Hold Deep Reservoir of Emotion," Valley News, April 20, 2017. Retrieved February 13, 2026.Johnson, Ken. "Susan Jane Walp," The New York Times, January 24, 2003. Retrieved February 13, 2026. Stephen Westfall commented, "the care and precision of her painting decisions are felt as a kind of spiritual penetration into the everyday and into the realm of awareness in art wherein the living speak with the dead or the otherwise absent."Westfall, Stephen. Susan Jane Walp: Come Close, New York, NY: Tibor de Nagy Gallery, 2007.
Early life and education Walp was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on September 7, 1948.Butler, Sharon. "Preview: Susan Jane Walp at Tibor de Nagy," Two Coats of Paint, September 4, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2026. She studied art at Mount Holyoke College (BA, 1970) and a Boston University summer program, where she first worked with painter Lennart Anderson, a longtime mentor and friend, who taught her a painting approach grounded in tonal relationships. She undertook further studies at the New York Studio School, with Nicholas Carone, the Skowhegan School, and the Brooklyn College MFA program.
Career Walp has exhibited in solo shows at galleries including Fischbach and Tibor de Nagy in New York City, Pamela Salisbury in Hudson, New York,Goodrich, John. "Momentousness: The Still Life Paintings of Susan Jane Walp," Artcritical, October 5, 2015. Retrieved February 13, 2026. Hackett Freedman in San Francisco, and Victoria Munroe in New York City and Boston.Corbett, William. "Susan Walp Drawings: Victoria Munroe Gallery," ArtsMEDIA, November 2003.McQuaid, Cate. "Contemplative still lifes," The Boston Globe, January 4, 2007. Her work has also appeared at the American Academy, Denver Art Museum, Jaffe-Friede Gallery of Dartmouth College, Naples Museum of Art and National Academy Museum, among other venues. She is based in Vermont. Work and reception Critics link Walp's work to historical traditions such as American pragmatism and its emphasis on discipline, attention and craft, Roman frescoes and Northern European renaissance still lifes. Modern touchstones include the compositional order of Cézanne and the early Cubism of Braque and Juan Gris, Giorgio Morandi, and 20th-century American painters such as Charles Webster Hawthorne and Edwin Dickinson, who combined penetrating observation with an atmospheric, sometimes abstract, sense of space. New York Times critic Ken Johnson wrote, "Walp is a modernist … She knows how to make paint do double duty in the service of both a cannily abbreviated illusionism and a delicate abstraction of paper-thin planes … how to let painterly gesture embody a sensual urgency that the imagery demurely guards."
Walp typically works at a limited size in muted colors and in a square format more associated with abstraction.Yau, John. "Still Life and the Poetry of Place: The Hidden Poetry of Everyday Life," Hyperallergic, September 28, 2022. Retrieved February 13, 2026. Her iconography is enigmatic, consisting of arrangements of objects without functional relationships to one another.Scott, Andrea. "(Nothing but) Flowers," The New Yorker, August 7, 2020. Retrieved February 13, 2026. Her compositions frequently employ a complex geometry of secondary shapes and objects revolving around a central, often circular, element.Paglia, Michael. "Object Lessons," Westword, September 10, 1998. Retrieved February 13, 2026. She sometimes compresses space in way that equalizes meticulously detailed objects and minimal, rougher backgrounds, creating a tension between intimate naturalism and artifice (e.g., Melon Sliced Open on a Black Plate with Knife, 2015). Art in America critic Eric Sutphin remarked, "The modesty of Walp’s work is deceptive: her paintings demand the viewer’s complete attention in order to reveal their nuances … [they] reward those who take the time to look at them closely and deeply, their quiet stillness offering a moment of contemplative sanctuary."
Recognition Walp was awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation (2006), Bogliasco Center (2007), New York Creative Arts Public Service Program (1978) and National Endowment for the Arts (1977).John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Susan Jane Walp, Fellows. Retrieved February 13, 2026.Bogliasco Center. Directory of Fellows. Retrieved February 13, 2026.National Academy Museum. Susan Jane Walp, People. Retrieved February 13, 2026. She received awards and grants from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2009, 2021) and National Academy of Design (2006, 2009). In 2017, she was the artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College.Dartmouth College. 2017 Artist-in-Residence Lecture, 2017. Retrieved February 13, 2026.
Walp's art is held in the public collections of the Hood Museum of Art, National Academy Museum and Sheldon Museum of Art, among others.Hood Museum of Art. Susan Jane Walp, Collections. Retrieved February 13, 2026.National Academy Museum. Blueberries in a Green Candy Dish with Tea Strainer, Susan Jane Walp, Collections. Retrieved February 13, 2026.Sheldon Museum of Art. Susan Jane Walp, Collections. Retrieved February 13, 2026.
References
External links Official website Susan Jane Walp & Eleanor Ray in Conversation, New York Studio School, 2021 Susan Jane Walp interview, Savvy Painter, 2016 Susan Jane Walp interview, Hyperallergic, 2015 Susan Jane Walp, Tibor de Nagy