Susanne Kilgore Arnold (Photo by John Henley)
Susanne Kilgore Arnold, a lifelong artist, died after a short illness on Jan. 17, at age 85. For a half-century, Arnold in her work delved into archaeology, mythology, cultural memory, personal history — and an appreciation of cats. She undertook the work through painting, drawing and sculpture. Arnold realized her pieces primarily using encaustic, an ancient technique that incorporates a heated wax medium mixed with colored pigments. In this way, she transformed objects into representatives of a fantastical antiquity.
Arnold was an artist member at Artspace; the gallery will host a memorial for her on Friday, March 6, from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at 2833-A Hathaway Road in Richmond.
“She never stopped working,” recalls a friend of Arnold’s, artist Karen Kincaid Wittich. She and Arnold exhibited together in early 2025 at Brightpoint Community College’s gallery. “Her studio was in her upstairs guest bedroom, and there were all kinds of stuff; it was so full you could barely move around in there. She had me help her install some wooden brackets that the piece would slide into. Then she’d back up into her bedroom to look at it from a distance to get a better look at it,” Wittich says of their collaboration.
Arnold grew up in McLean and later earned three degrees from Richmond Professional Institute, which became Virginia Commonwealth University: a BFA in 1963, a MFA in painting in 1985 and a MA in art history and museum studies in 1989. In addition to Artspace, she served as an artist member at 1708 Gallery and the former Art6. At various times during her life, she was a curator and gallery director. She was also the mother of two daughters who survive her.
Wittich first met Arnold in the mid-1980s when both were members of the artist-run nonprofit 1708. “She was smart and funny, and outspoken,” Wittich recalls. Arnold looked at the facets of challenges and sought responses. This characteristic could cause necessary meetings to slow down when others wanted to get on with the business. “But she knew so much,” Wittich reflects. “She knew the right questions to ask.”
In a 2020 video celebrating Artspace’s 32nd anniversary and anticipated move from its Plant Zero location, Arnold addressed her experience in the arts.
“Richmond is a strange city. It has one of the largest important art universities in the country, yet it has very few opportunities for the artists that live here to exhibit their work, to talk about their work, to sell their work. Organizations that are run by artists, rather than commercial galleries, gives us the opportunity to choose the art that is seen by the public,” Arnold said in the video. She also observed that, when starting out in her art life, she received help from numerous others. She sought to return that mentorship by making connections between up-and-comers and those further along.
Arnold, as have other makers, often used existing items as armatures or as elements that could become part of something else. She collected discarded objects and pieces of rusted metal from Richmond’s alleys and parking lots. Arnold hunted for distinct shapes, colors and textures.
For a 2013 retrospective of her work, “Buried Voices,” at the McLean Project for the Arts, curator Nancy Sausser wrote an essay introducing Arnold’s creations to gallerygoers. Sausser said, “I greatly admired her work, and she was lovely to work with.” In her introduction, Sausser considered the varied periods of Arnold’s artistic journey. “The Backyard Excavation paintings depict imaginary archeological sites combined with dream imagery and visuals from Arnold’s life and surroundings, establishing a method that served Arnold well throughout her creative life,” Sausser said. “These works highlight the flow of time as they juxtapose the living with the dead, showing the process by which the one informs the other and introducing the element of earth and the process of sifting through the past.”
Arnold’s “St. Elmo’s Fire” series likewise blended natural events with history and personal experience. These works were prompted from the aftermath of the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. She referenced this phenomenon in which flames erupt spontaneously. Fire further entered her dreams and daylight imaginings “after a large building near Arnold’s house burned to the ground, literally threatening her entire block of row-houses; a fine example of imagination merging with reality,” Sausser said.
Artist Louis Poole, another 1708 Gallery member who became acquainted with Arnold, says, “I always enjoyed her work. There was that classical purpose, in and of itself. I responded to her subdued palette and the textures she was able to get. She worked in a variety of media, and the tactile invited you into it. And she’s one of the ones who kept going; she kept making work, and that was always good to see.”
Arnold’s art was displayed throughout the commonwealth and abroad. She was twice awarded Virginia Museum of Fine Arts fellowships and notably received individual artist grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation and the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation.
During the summer of 2020, Arnold’s exhibition “Circe’s World” was shown at Artspace. The theme came out of Greek mythology. Helios banished his daughter Circe for what he deemed bad behavior to a deserted island, where she lived in solitary grief. She developed powers of sorcery to protect against marauding sailors, whom she turned into pigs and other wild beasts.
One year, Arnold and Wittich were hired by the Arts Council of Richmond for its then-annual Children’s Festival to create the facade of a log cabin using cardboard on a wooden frame. “Really thick cardboard,” Wittich recalls. “It was huge.” At the time, Wittich maintained a large studio at the former Fulton School in the city’s East End. “Susanne was an excellent faux painter. It looked so real,” Wittich says. They soon learned, however, that the piece’s size prevented their fake cabin to move from the studio.
“We forgot to measure the damn door,” Wittich says with a laugh. This necessitated cutting the piece in two — which provided for a humorous story, but later. “Smart people can do silly things,” she quips.
Sausser summarized Arnold’s approach to the work for the 2013 retrospective. Arnold’s process examined “monumental and elemental themes of life and death, past and present, family connections, creation, destruction, rejuvenation, and the interconnections between all the above. She has created work springing from earth, air, fire, and water, and echoed those elements through her choice of material and working methods. She has honored the role of storytelling throughout the ages by becoming an excellent storyteller herself. By highlighting the myths and lore of the past while also fashioning some of her own, Arnold poignantly points to our still strong connections between past, present, future, and each other.”
