Susan Quinn Horsfall - Kaleidoscope

Look into a kaleidoscope and the patterns never sit still. Every turn brings new color, new light, and new shapes. Painting this body of work felt exactly like that.

With each canvas, I chased something new: texture, stencils, light and shadow, and tools that weren't brushes. I painted fast and loose, then slow and planned, then abstract.

I also took a deep dive into color relationships, trying new palettes with unexpected, bolder choices. This is the collection where I started layering colors of paint and watching them glow through each other felt a lot like turning a kaleidoscope. Some combinations worked right away, and some took a few rounds before they clicked.

My subjects come from my own life. I grew up in Indiana surrounded by farms, and I've been a dancer my whole life. A herd of cows became a chance to play with unexpected color, and the showgirls gave me a reason to go bold. Snow became its own exploration, from my downhill skier series to the cows in long winter shadows, and I loved finding the colors and textures hiding in it. What kept me looking was the play of light and shadow, the textures, and the patterns hiding in the background, and the shapes kept changing.

Then I started turning the canvas itself. I placed figures on a narrow vertical, spread one painting across three canvases, and even tried a round canvas. Each new format was another twist of the kaleidoscope.

I kept turning, and these are the paintings that fell into place.