Susan Wald’s luminous canvases, with their distinctive foreground assemblies, invite storying. In each scene, the assemblies become animated; the players take on disposition and purpose. They herd together, their eyes on the interloper; they gain safety in numbers. Sometimes, humanoid, they converse -- convivial guests around a dining table. Other times, they form a conga line, dancing along an infinity loop across canvases.

It’s a mark of brilliance that Susan Wald can paint such scenes of vitality and sociability from the configuration of skulls. She conjures life in its absence: the eyes of these players sparkle, they engage with each other and with us. They settle in landscapes of vivid and shimmering hue – apricot, mango, coral, musk, magenta – colours of the rising and setting of the sun – and opalescent aqua, the colour of the morning sky once the sun is up. Yet these colours are not of the sky but of earth; rich shadows ground these gatherings. 

Lenore Manderson AM
Professor, University of the Witwatersrand
January 2024