Lecturer exhibits art in NYC

Fine Arts Lecturer Susan Leites expresses herself through her painting. And her expressions were going for $2000 to $3000 a pop, according to John Szoke, owner of John Szoke Gallery in New York. Her show, "Transformations: Pastels and Paperworks," had been exhibiting in the Soho gallery since early last month, and closed Saturday after a 10-day extension. "Pastel is a way of combining drawing and painting," Leites said, noting that Henri Matisse and Edgar Degas were the forerunners in this area. "I am interested in taking subject matter that risks sentimentality or melodrama and making something tough and enduring," she added. The show includes series of flowers, cityscapes and one entitled "Suddenly There Was Nothing Between Me and the Ditch." "I take an image, be it flower, cityscape or ditch and make a series," she said. "Changing the way I draw, [I] paint the image in order to change the metaphor. The work is, in part, about feeling and sensations." Leites uses contrasting bright and dark colors and sharp brushstrokes in the Tulip Series. The ditch series is more subdued, expressing the space between the audience and mortality. "[The ditch paintings] were done at a time when I was seriously ill and are about earth and spirit or void," she said. Leites said she did not major in art while at Smith College, but later studied at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. "She is a very good artist," Szoke said. "[She is] very serious about her work, [there is] great integrity in her work, and I have been touched by her work." Leites began teaching art and exhibiting her work in 1970. She has taught at a New York center for drug addicts, Smith College, and began teaching at the University in 1982. Leites directed the University's Bachelor of Fine Arts program from 1984 to 1990 and currently teaches courses in first year painting and advanced drawing. Leites said she has also worked on stage design and has published charcoal drawings in the poetry magazine Transfer. The artist said she tries to express an interior/exterior landscape, "a continuum between interiority and the world around me." Szoke said that "attendance and reception [were] exceptional" at the show. "You can't help but get immersed in it and have your own feelings about [it]," he said. "She is technically superb."