Suzanne Caporael Illinois, New York (b. 1949) The Architecture of Trees: Oaks, 1991 etching and aquatint Pencil signed and dated lower right, numbered 33/40 lower left. Biography from Richard Gray Gallery- New York: Suzanne Caporael is a painter whose elusive imagery - ranging from refined figuration to color-field abstraction - derives from her methodical, persistent observation of the natural world. She is primarily interested in the collection and recollection of individual experience, and the way in which the brain processes visual information. From the chemical make-up of water in estuaries near her studio in upstate New York, to the landscape she encountered in remote stretches of a road trip across the United States, Caporael is continually investigating modes of perception and memory in her work. The artist begins work on a painting by producing collages made from color swatches collected over the course of her career. These collages determine the final composition and its distinctive, highly-nuanced color palette she produces by mixing raw pigment in the studio to achieve an unparalleled precision of hue and value. As Ken Johnson noted in The New York Times, "Caporael's paintings are a curious mix of the aesthetic and the conceptual... the paintings are sensuous and lyrical as well as rigorously formal." Caporael received both her BFA and MFA from the Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles. Her work is represented in many major museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; the Milwaukee Art Museum; the Portland Museum of Art; the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Yale University Art Gallery, among others. She lives and works in Stone Ridge, New York. 16 1/4"H x 19 1/8"W (sheet), 27"H x 29 1/4"W (sheet)