Susan Dobay on Poets Cafe March 31, 2019 by Poets Cafe on KPFK

“Susan (Zsuzsa) Dobay is a visual artist of Hungarian origin, living in the United States. She and her husband fled Hungary following the suppression of the 1956 Revolution, She lives and creates in the Los Angeles area community of Monrovia.

Dobay’s art and artistic credo are universal. She is an experimental artist, constantly seeking the new in the world and in herself. She connects the past to the present and to the issues of the future. She questions continually, examining the most crucial aspects of life. As she seeks art’s place in the world, she cross-examines the mysteries of humanity and the world. Dobay’s art simultaneously mirrors both the rational conception of the world and its meditative aspects. Her works completely express her mode of vision. At the same time, that does not prevent her from also being an artist of emotion. In her pictures, she invariably transmits the seen and observed world via emotional impulses.

She raises and approaches the principal philosophical issues of the world in terms of their ethical aspects. The human aspect of humanity stands at the center of her thought and her art. “I have no religion, but I do have faith,” she proclaims in her painting and, with respect to life, in her words. This motto simultaneously lays bare the relativity concealed in her world view: the fact that she can see everything in its own provisional nature – and it may be precisely this that opens her up to constant renewal. She has never been satisfied with the results of one or another of her artistic periods. We can distinguish several artistic periods and styles in her art. Even as she likes, and – in contrast to many artists – does not “deny” her earliest works. On the contrary, it is characteristic of her and her art that she will “reuse” one motif or another as the principal defining moment of her life, while reconstructing it in a new context. Serenity and an embrace of life radiate from her and her work: as though she always seeks to transmit optimal balance through her painting. Even her works inspired by world politics and social critique spring from energetic, positive conviction.”

~ Lilla Szabo, Art historian, Hungarian National Gallery