The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

In 1970, at the age of twenty-seven, Susan Hall moved to New York City, where she would reside for twenty years before returning to her native town of Point Reyes Station in California. In the early seventies, while living in the Bowery, Hall made a series of wash paintings centered around women in varying environments—poolside, at the workplace, in the city, among others. In contrast to the soft palette, the women depicted in these works are sturdy, confident, and often express a carefree quality. While it was not possible to locate the four paintings presented in Twenty Six Contemporary Women Artists, The Ornithologist is from the same body of work, portraying a woman in an aviary filled with a motley of colorful, exotic birds. Having grown up in Northern California where the grasslands meet the Pacific Ocean seashore and the landscape is pulsing with wildlife, Hall has incorporated the region’s flora and fauna throughout her career.