{"id":521,"date":"2010-06-02T18:05:25","date_gmt":"2010-06-03T00:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15bytes12\/2010\/06\/02\/susette-gertsch\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T19:25:50","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T02:25:50","slug":"susette-gertsch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/susette-gertsch\/","title":{"rendered":"Susette Gertsch: The Limness Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>What happens when you sign a contract \u2013 with yourself \u2013 to produce an ambitious quantity of work in a year? It\u2019s positively life changing, as Midway artist Susette Gertsch will tell you.<\/p>\n

On a meandering painting trip through Europe in 2009, Gertsch stopped in the UK to paint with Jon Hall (a.k.a. \u201cSuncage\u201d), a plein air artist whose work she had admired\u00a0online. It was he who introduced her to the notion of a \u201climner contract\u201d and encouraged her to take the challenge.<\/p>\n

A \u201climner,\u201d Gertsch explains, was a skilled illustrator of manuscripts in medieval Europe. Later, in 19th- century America, the term was applied to mostly self-taught painters of portraits and landscapes who traveled from town to town, finding subjects along the way and selling the work to the local populace. Hall\u2019s 21st-century contract idea combines this itinerant tradition with a personal artistic challenge.<\/p>\n

After a great deal of thought, and balancing the \u201cpossible\u201d with the \u201cchallenging,\u201d Gertsch settled on the details of her contract. Starting on September 1, 2009, she would paint 300 plein air paintings in a year and document them in\u00a0a blog<\/a>, including photographs of her location, her equipment, and passersby. Now, with only three months left to go in the contract, Gertsch can tell you the benefits, frustrations, and unexpected joys of holding one\u2019s creative self accountable for both process and productivity — much of which will be on exhibition at Midway Town Hall in June.<\/p>\n

Like those limners of old, Gertsch wanders the countryside to find her subjects. Unlike her predecessors, she is highly trained and highly skilled, having earned B.A. and M.F.A. degrees from BYU, and having taught art in high schools in Australia and Salt Lake City for many years. But all of that training cannot compare to the lessons she\u2019s learned (and is still learning) since 9\/1\/09.<\/p>\n