Jennifer Coates wrote about this image and Atlantic by Ray Kass in

An image of water painted in watercolor reveals an amusing cycle of wet to dry to wet. Dry pigment was made wet. Wet color was swirled in puddles or rubbed in patches on white. Wet dried on white to make an image of wet.

In Atlantic, Ray Kass controlled wet, slowed it down and minimized its usual propensity towards dripping, spilling or drenching. To create the impression of water, he imprinted white with ochres and murky grey greens. The color was added in layers, indirectly: liquid turned static through careful staining. The white of the page and the scrubby patches of color loosely cohered into waves and refracting light. Wet was not wet but dry, and dry faked wet.

Susan Shatter's Wave was more turbulent, convulsive and agitated. Dark blues, yellowy browns and greens bled into each other. Resembling a detail from a Frederick Church painting of Niagara Falls, this specimen of foamy, inky violence accentuated the wetness of the medium. Yet Shatter trained the watercolor to adhere to its inner compulsions in designated zones: pools of pigmented water were punctuated by opaque, linear accents. Wet could be wet, but only sometimes.

Kass and Shatter have exercised material control over unruly water to create comprehensible, romantic microcosms of its unknowable vastness and depth.

JENNIFER COATES is a painter and writer living in New York.

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Susan Shatter's career began to take form in 1975 when she was chosen by the U.S. Department of the Interior to paint landscapes for a U.S. bicentennial celebration exhibit. Her strong connection with the terrain of Moab, Utah began to shape a pathway that Shatter has traveled throughout her career. Natural organic forms created by the forces of destruction and creation became a consistent theme that Shatter continues to pursue landscape and figurative work.

Watercolor has been a resource for Shatter nearly from the start. Although she was an oil painter initially, she discovered watercolor in 1971. Looking for a faster drying medium and disappointed by the limited color range of acrylic and the matte effect of gouache, Shatter welcomed the challenge of mastering the "mercurial properties" of watercolor. Shatter discovered: "Watercolor is a unique combination of spontaneity and control. On the one hand, you can work "au premier coup" in a single fast paced attack executing the painting all at once…or you can slowly build up layers of color that radiate light as the pigment meshes with the paper." She continues, "the languid flow of water, through its own organic existence can evoke organic nature. It is the perfect medium for "capturing light on moving water."

From a technical perspective, Shatter experiments with all of the possibilities of watercolor including: choice of paper, contrasts of light and dark, bold brushstrokes, delicate bleeds, sharp edges or line, and retaining the paper surface. Subtractive techniques including masking, scraping, sponging, blotting, rewetting and lifting are also explored. Shatter explains that the medium can be frustrating until one masters the hazards of buckling paper, drying times, water marks, and muddy washes.

"Wave" represents a new analysis of the energetic forces of nature. While Shatter continues her investigation of the struggle for supremacy between the sea and land, this time she looks directly into the element, water. Oceans, water, and waves are deep in the mystery of the formation of the earth. The "Wave" is Shatter's first portrait of this undulating form moving across the surface of the sea. Shatter constructed "Wave" from months of looking at and drawing waves on location in Ireland.

Not to be missed is the structural underpinning of the painting. Shatter calls upon her "figurescape" experience in which tracings of bones that will hinge the space together.

In Shatter's latest show catalogue, "the sea's edge" (April 5 - September 30, 2001), an opening poem by Seamus Heaney begins with the words "The timeless waves…Came glinting, sifting from the Americas". The "Wave" become a magical abstraction that conveys the beauty and sensuality that Shatter aspires to communicate in the basic element, water.

- Jen Wechsler

[all quotations from the artist from an interview with the author in September 2002]