Slow Burn

Artist: Deanna Schuerbeke

Format: Acrylic on Canvas

Dimensions: 36" × 44"

Description:
Deanna Schuerbeke painted Slow Burn in Santa Fe, under the influence of New Mexico's landscape — its deep reds and maroons, its sage green against ochre earth, its heat that sits in the air without breaking into flame. "It's like a heat that hasn't broken into flame yet," she says — a metaphor for wanting something and choosing, deliberately, not to rush toward it. Letting it come in its own time. There is a word for that. The title is it.

The painting arrives the way its subject does — with warmth and urgency in equal measure. The colors are full-bodied and saturated, burgundy and crimson and deep pink mulled and melded together with the richness of something steeped rather than poured, the paint smudged and blended until each passage carries genuine depth. A diagonal line of warm ochre pulls the eye from the lower left upward into that dense, smoldering upper register — and for a moment the pull feels irresistible, the momentum building toward something. Then the white lines appear: thin, delicate marks drawn across the surface, paint scraped back rather than added, the gesture of subtraction in a canvas otherwise built entirely on accumulation. They are the restraint made visible. The pause before the decision. Not yet.

Below, a wide field of cream and peach opens the lower register — warm but unhurried, breathing, the visual equivalent of patience held without strain. Slow Burn is exactly what its title promises: the particular heat of wanting something fully while choosing to let it arrive on its own terms. It is, in the very best sense, irresistible.

Want to learn more? 

Read Deanna's Introduction Blog Page
Check out her Artist Bio & Statement

Sign up to receive email notifications about Deanna's new work and where it's showing