At the Kenai Art Center this month, Kenai can be seen through “fresh eyes.” That’s how artist Susie Scrivner described her show, “Portraits of the Kenai,” on Friday.
Across the walls are paintings, a “snapshot” of Alaska as Scrivner sees it. She moved to Alaska around eight years ago and sees things “people have maybe gotten too used to seeing.” On one wall are vivid depictions of some familiar sights of Kenai’s Old Town, like the Veronica’s Cafe sunroom. On another are scenes of both set- and dipnetting.
Depicted in paint are the Kenai River, Skilak Lake, Homer, Seward and others.
In some of Scrivner’s works, forget-me-nots are a recurring motif. Alaska is changing quickly, she said, and some of the sights and scenes she’s captured might not be around forever — “no one has setnet in two years.”
“If you don’t understand it, you lose it,” she said. “I just hope that people appreciate what they have.”
Scrivner says that anyone can paint, but that to create art requires a lot of introspection and self-forgiveness. In a contemporary culture where everyone compares themselves and their work to others, “you just have to be passionate about the process and press on.”
“You’re going to ruin a lot of paintings,” she said. “Painting is a wrestling match. There’s a beauty in the struggle. It takes courage to finish a painting, and if you don’t finish it, it’s not going to get done.”
Alongside the paintings are works of glass, leather, wood and sculpture. Scrivner said she has a passion for art, and likes to “mix it up.” That passion is one she discovered when she moved to Alaska at a time she was facing severe health issues that also stopped her from singing, her first artistic passion.
“I came here to die, basically,” she said. “You can stay on a shelf for two years — if that’s what I was going to live, if there’s such a thing as safe — or you can have an adventure.”
She compared that journey to one work on the wall that features a unique “damage.” After the work was painted, she said she covered the painting with ink, “which can kill the painting,” and then scrubbed it underwater.
“If you can take the darkness, and the drowning, and the scrubbing, it becomes something remarkable.”
That’s why Scrivner said she encourages others to create. A final painting, by the entrance to the gallery, depicts Scrivner naked and crying tears of paint in a moment this year when she almost walked away from art. The portrait is titled “Stained Glass Window,” evoking the way broken glass can be mended into beautiful works of art — “the broken pieces shape who we become.”
“If I quit, my own portrait would be missing,” she said. “Do we submit to the darkness and the drowning? Do we give up? Do we maybe survive it and become not just a good painting, but a remarkable one?”
“Portraits of the Kenai” will have an opening reception Friday, Oct. 4, starting at 5 p.m. with live music and refreshments. Scrivner will give an artist’s talk at 6 p.m.
“Portraits of the Kenai” will be open during gallery hours, noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday until Oct. 25.
For more information about Scrivner and her work, visit szqstudios.com or find “SZQ Art Studios” on Facebook. Her studio gallery is in the Peninsula Center Mall.
Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.
Artwork by Susie Scrivner for her exhibition, “Portraits of the Kenai,” fills the walls of the Kenai Art Center in Kenai, Alaska, on Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)
Artwork by Susie Scrivner for her exhibition, “Portraits of the Kenai,” fills the walls of the Kenai Art Center in Kenai, Alaska, on Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)
Artwork by Susie Scrivner for her exhibition, “Portraits of the Kenai,” fills the walls of the Kenai Art Center in Kenai, Alaska, on Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024. (Jake Dye/Peninsula Clarion)
