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# Deceptively Playful Portraits Mask Personal Traumas
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/susan-carr-flipside-labspace/
- Published: 2019-05-13T21:49:42.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:39:37.000Z
- Description: At first glance, Susan Carr's paintings and sculptures appear whimsical and carnivalesque, but grow frightening upon closer inspection.
- Author: Sara Okamura
- Tags: Art, Review, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:34 (2019, 2020, part 1)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2019/05/big-momma.jpg)

Susan Carr, “Big Momma” (2019) Acrylic on mixed media with yarn and wood (17 inches x 16 inches x 5 inches) (Photo: Hideyo Okamura)

HILLSIDE, New York — When you first enter Susan Carr’s solo exhibition, *FLIPSIDE,* on view at [LABSpace](http://labspaceart.blogspot.com/?ref=hyperallergic.com), the 75 featured paintings and sculptures appear whimsical and carnivalesque; they’re heavy on primary colors and rendered in a childlike, faux-naif style. The longer you look, however, the more you realize this is not a carnival, but a multi-faceted document of Carr’s determination to make artwork by any means necessary despite decades of financial struggles after she became a single mother at age 16\. What initially appears playful grows frightening upon closer inspection: the delirious smiles of her paintings’ subjects read as comments on how often average women are expected to “grin and bear it” after surviving trauma.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2019/05/ear-plugs.jpg)

Susan Carr, “Ear Plugs”, (2019) Oil on Wood (11 inches x 9 inches)

In a portrait called “Ear Plugs,” lime green hair, a yellow barrette, and a blue striped shirt rise up from a red wooden background; black pupils pop out from the whites of the subject’s eyes and a thick black stroke of a smile almost reaches her forehead. The image seems goofy and cartoonish until you really look at the face: the center is red and purple, furiously executed, as if someone had just ripped off a mask hiding an open wound.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2019/05/peg.jpg)

Susan Carr, “Peg” (2018) Oil on Wood (5 inches x 5 inches) (Photo: Hideyo Okamura)

In a portrait of the artist’s grandmother, Peg, who hailed from Appalachia and suffered through an unhappy marriage, a flat pink face with a half-open mouth and bright yellow brush strokes for hair bursts out from a creamy, light-blue background. Black eyes rimmed in red with lids half-shut evoke a sense that the subject is holding back tears.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2019/05/inst1.jpg)

Susan Carr: Flipside at LABspace (2019) (Installation view) (photo: Hideyo Okamura)

A white orb punctuated with a black pupil appears in several paintings — a motif that the artist adopted after the death of one of her sons. Sometimes a pair of these orbs is riding a white horse; in one painting, they hold each other. In a past interview, Carr explained, “When my son passed, the eye motif became very important and has been dominant in my work. It is a way to communicate my feelings, a way to talk. So this motif comes from the deepest recesses of me.” The angst and loneliness found in other pieces is replaced with a sense of camaraderie and connection between these two eyeball creatures.

Several pieces resemble abstracted, fantastical riffs on the female anatomy, such as “Big Mama,” a frothy, hot pink oval wall sculpture composed of lush, concentric spirals of clay that appear to be magnetically pulled towards a nipple-like protuberance at the center. It thrusts out from a rectangular box dripping with paint-encrusted cascades of yarn, suggesting both a breast and an umbilical cord.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2019/05/a-song-a-dream.jpg)

Susan Carr, “A Song, A Dream” (2018) Oil on Canvas (30 inches x 24 inches) (Photo courtesy of the artist)

Evoking a sense of religious icons, Carr’s portraits are intimate in size and created using a heavy impasto technique. “Ear Plugs” is painted so thickly that it could easily be referred to as a relief, making the distinction between sculpture and painting seems almost beside the point here. “Gesture is integral to each of these works,” Carr said in a 2018 [interview](https://artspiel.org/susan-carr-getting-used-to-being-uncomfortable/?ref=hyperallergic.com). “The presence of the human hand is very important to me. It is like dancing. Gesture says humanity was here.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2019/05/inst2.jpg)

Susan Carr: Flipside at LABspace (2019) (Installation view) (photo: Hideyo Okamura)

[Susan Carr: FLIPSIDE](http://labspaceart.blogspot.com/2019/03/susan-carr-flipside-opens-sunday-april.html?ref=hyperallergic.com) *continues at LABspace (2642 NY Route 23 Hillsdale NY) through May 19.*