Susan Ecker

Admired Objects: Acquired Subjects

From Saturday 31 October 2026
To Sunday 31 January 2027

Reflecting on the work of JT Abernathy

The muse intrigues in wondrous ways—any place, any thing, anyone can urge a direction for work. Admired Objects: Acquired Subjects began with a phone call from Donnybrook to Michigan: painter Susan Ecker calling her dear friend, the American potter JT Abernathy, on his 100th birthday.

Across continents, the two artists have stayed connected through friendship and a shared belief in exchanging knowledge: Abernathy’s mentorship of two generations of potters, and Ecker’s conviction that passing on knowledge is both a gift and a debt repaid. It is not a passive experience. It is the continuing expansion of the history of art.

Ecker has collected Abernathy's work since meeting him in the 1960s. Images of his work have been appearing in her paintings over the years that followed. Abernathy’s pots—real, three-dimensional forms in clay—become, in her work, line and colour within the illusion of painting: an honouring, inspired dynamic.

Susan Ecker, a native New Yorker, received a Bachelor of Science in Design, concentrating on Drawing and Painting, from the College of Architecture and Design. School of Art, University of Michigan. She continued post graduate study there, at the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies. She earned a Master of Arts, Fine Arts, from the University of Maryland and then completed one additional year of post graduate study in art history.

She has taught drawing, painting and design at the secondary and university levels and was Adjunct Professor of Art at Linfield College in Oregon. She has extensive experience in the visual arts, including lecturing on the history of art and architectural design. Her paintings and drawings have been exhibited widely and received well in the US and Australia.

In the mid-1970s, as a result of a drawing commission, she began consulting with architects about design and the use of materials and colour. Several of the architectural projects on which she worked have been reviewed in newspapers and professional publications.

In 1997, her painting, Theme: Virgil, a mixed-media on wood piece recalling the landscape of East Hampton, received Honorable Mention at the Guild Hall 59th Annual, from the exhibition juror, Arthur C. Danto, art critic of The Nation.

Her first retrospective, in 2005, was at the James Miller Fine Arts Center at Linfield College in Oregon.

She continues to work in East Hampton, New York and Australia and is teaching Visual Arts at Edith Cowan University (South West) in Western Australia.

_{Image: Susan Ecker, Studio: Chair-Vessels/Cream-Blue-Charcoal (detail), 2019, mixed media/oil on canvas, 91.5 x 91.5 cm; JT Abernathy, assorted pots and vessels, glazed in similar colours. Photograph by Sam Beard.}

Susan Ecker | Admired Objects: Acquired Subjects

Admired Objects: Acquired Subjects

Reflecting on the work of JT Abernathy

Susan Ecker

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