Susan Godwin builds dramatic paintings out of blank canvas and a few select colors. Abstracts have played an accelerating role in Susan Godwin's repertoire over the past dozen years. They now monopolize her studio time, to the near exclusion of the more impressionistic figurative work that sparked her early success. "It's a common misconception that abstracts are easy, that you just throw some paint on the canvas," says Godwin, a full-time Fairhope artist who paints exclusively in oils on canvas. "They're not easy! You have to start from nowhere, just pull it out of your head. But, because it comes out of my head, it's something that I can really call my own. Nobody else can see what I'm seeing, or where I'm going with it." Godwin does not pre-draw anything. "I don't work top to bottom or left to right," she says. Her first step is to cover the canvas with big blocks of colors. She then starts concentrating on smaller patches of color. Apply some paint. Back up 20 feet, study the result. Think things out before deciding where the next stroke goes. Her approach is deliberate. "I want people to think it is spontaneous and happened very quickly, even though it really is a lot of work." Each painting evolves in its own way. "I like painting something, and knowing that I have no idea what it's going to look like when I’m done," she explains. "It's exciting to see how it ends up. When I find a part of it that I really like, I work around that, and build a whole painting out of it. If it's clicking, the canvas will tell me where to put the next color." Godwin rarely allows drying time between sessions. "Once it's dry, it's hard for me to bring colors together the way I like, and do what I call bridging - creating the little openings from one part to another that allow your eye to move all around the canvas, unobstructed," she says. "All of my paintings have a focal point. Once I find where it is, the job of the rest of the painting is to support it." A variety of textures complement the more obvious visual elements, like color, tonal juxtapositions and spatial relationships. She mixes translucent and opaque paints, for example. One allows underlying colors and even patches of canvas to show through; the other obliterates whatever it covers - unless it's scraped. She does a lot of scraping and blending, working almost exclusively with the palette knife. "It's like sculpting on the canvas," she says. Godwin wants the viewer to linger. She offsets areas that demand attention with places designed as resting spots for the eye. But while there is much going on in these paintings, there's no symbolism, no deeper meaning. "I had that experience in college," Godwin says. "In art appreciation, the teacher said if there's a dog in the painting, it's about fertility. As a painter now, if there's a dog in the painting, it's just a dog. No extra message there at all." However, people do see things in her paintings. And once it's pointed out, she sometimes sees it too. "I did this huge painting," she recalls, laughing. "My husband said, 'I see a flamingo.' I said, 'Now that you say that, I see a man's head.' I named it 'Attack of the Killer Flamingos.' I took it to the gallery. They hated the name." But they did sell the painting. Image information: Main: Godwin finished "Water Hole Wetlands" fairly quickly - or so she thought. But as is often the case, it needed a little more (or less) of something. "I wanted it to be as abstract as possible, but still be a painting of boats," she says. She studied and tweaked it for a couple of weeks before deciding it was done. Left: Godwin started the 48-by-48-inch "High Cotton" on Thursday and finished it on Sunday night. "Once things click, if they do, then the painting can go pretty fast," she says. "Sunday I decided, that's it. It's done." Right: "Back to the Garden" is named after a Neil Young song. This painting first started with a big area of blue on the right, a patch of a greenish color on the left, and a celery green at the top. Then she started adding some texture and dimension to it. "I want your eye to travel around the canvas, so I kind of have bridges and open passageways taking you there in a roundabout way," she says. Photos by Adrian Hoff - See the full images of the paintings in April 2010 Mobile Bay.