Sue Coe

Sue Coe is an illustrator who does both drawing and printmaking. She tends to do more political works, with a seeming focus on animal cruelty. The print I focused most on was "The Last Dance", made in 1985 and posted below.

I was first struck by Coe's emphasis on sole black and white works. While I am not always a fan of this approach, I feel the dramatic contrasts emphasize the satirical nature of her subject matters. For example, in "The Last Dance," the animal on the table in the middle is the primary focus. While there are other animals represented in the work, the central animal has a mandorla-like effect, caused by the back lighting from the skylight. Coupled with the central placement, the eye is led straight to it. Upon closer examination, one sees the fabric bound over it's paws and the chain holding it's mouth shut. This level of detail out of a print is something that I can not easily conceive of, as I would only think of doing intricacies with pen and ink.

Additionally, I am impressed by Coe's range of shades. As we discovered in our geodesic paintings at the beginning of the semester, maintaining a broad range while avoiding muddiness and loss of detail is not the easiest of tasks.

On a comparative note, I found that Coe's "The Last Dance" struck a resemblance to Pablo Picasso's "Guernica," painted in 1937 and posted below.

My primary reason for thinking of "Guernica" was the diagonal light source present in the middle of the painting, highlighting an animal in distress. The nudity, contortion, and overall disturbed feel to the other figures assist in making this comparison. As Coe produced her work approximately fifty years after Picasso's famous piece, it is entirely possible that she was inspired by it. On a conceptual level, this would make sense, as "Guernica" was painted to address the travesty facing Guernica, Spain, after a bombing, and to make note of the consequences of war as a whole. As stated earlier, Coe does emphasize political themes in her work, especially animal cruelty, so this does make sense.