What it is: This Island, painting, 20 by 20 inches, 2011, by Susanna Bluhm
Where it is: SOIL Gallery
“I love what you can’t articulate,” says Susanna Bluhm. Her paintings make the case that inarticulateness is gorgeous—that you don’t need to know what you’re saying when you say it in these colors, with these shapes, peachy diamonds up against azure triangles, a black-and-white trapezoid licked by a hot-pink tongue, a watered-down lavender streak hovering like a veil in midair. She drinks tea in her former-immigration-building studio on Airport Way, her abstracted landscapes hanging all around. They vary in how much you can make out of the original photographs they’re based on: Is that a fire jumping out of a backyard? A row of jewels laid across a shore in a heap? Why do some clouds take the blue with them when they wipe across the sky? Looking can lead to so many things besides knowing. 
“The worlds I paint leave a lot to engage the imagination by hinting at what lies beyond the four edges of the painting.” – Thomas Kinkade
I love that I came to read about the poetry of Susanna Bluhm’s work, and get a Thomas Kinkade quote…the world is alright…