2. Life Magazine Family Finds Home.
This article was originally published in the Two River Times for the week of February 24, 2006.
Glancing throught the pages of Life magazine more than 30 years ago, artist Suzanne Osterweil Weber came across a black-and-white photograph of a family that truly captured her attention. "They looked like a very cohesive unit as if they were one person, a perfect frozen moment, the way we remember our childhoods." Weber said.
The family was that of Greek shipping magnate, Stavros Niarchos, his wife, and their four children with the photographic setting being the family villa on their island, as a part of Greece, in the Aegean Sea.
In 1976 Suzanne painted Life Magazine Family (46 by 50) in her photorealist style translating the printed image to canvas using acrylic paint. In 1977 this depiction of the Niarchos family went on as one of the paintings in her solo show entitled American Life Series at the Westbroadway Gallery in SoHo, New York, New York.
For the first time since then the painting was exhibited at the annual Cancer Ball in Middletown last June gaining the attention of Suzanne's friend and sponsor, Leah Soltas of Rumson. A short time later, Leah read a review of Michael Gross' book 740 Park Avenue which mentioned the name of Spyros Niarchos as one on the residents of this prestigious building.
Finally Suzanne had a contact adress whereby she sent a letter to Niarchos introducing herself and telling him about the painting. The result was a meeting with him last November at 740 Park Avenue and his acquiring of the painting for his won private collection. The painting now resides back in the same villa where the original photograph was taken.
Spyros Niarchos is the second of the three sons in the photograph (far left) and one of three people in the family photograph, along with his brother Phillip and sister Maria Niarchos Gouaze, who are still alive.
Niarchos also acquired another painting by Suzanne Osterweil Weber entitled Poseidon depicting Suzanne's childhood bedroom with a small doll playing a drum and prominent sculpture of Poseidon in the forground. The Greek symbolism and that one of Spyros' companies has the same name as the painting's title drew him to it.
As a final compliment to the artist, Niarchos has asked her to paint a portrait of his children who are currently living in London.
In addition to painting since she was a child, Suzanne Osterweil Weber has had a parallel career in education as an art teacher and high school principal at schools in New York and New Jersey. She retired in 1997 and has been painting full time for the last nine years. "Coming out of education, I have reconnected with children and parents again through my painting," says Osterweil Weber, who lives in Ocean Township.
Her paintings tend to vary from painting crowds of people to lone figures which is reflective of her two careers. The crowds represent her career in education, always being surrounded by students and faculty, that sense of movement, sometimes frenetic activity and closeness to other bodies versus painting the lone figure in a quiet, reflective environment, thus representing her solitary career as an artist.
Weber is very conscious of wanting her work to continually change. Her subject matter and different modes of expression also include tropical motifs as sometimes full-blown paintings of senual flowers to animals in vivid lanscape settings. In her paintings of people she will often change the background in order to represent the subject's heritage or intrests, for instance. She has also done surrealist-based works and implied collages.
Like the artist herself, Weber's trademark is very evocative, colorful, consumed with with energy and vibrancy, and with sensitivity for impressing contrasting light and shadow into her work. Among her influences are Vermeer, Hopper and Matisse for respectively their talents in expressing use of light, state of loneliness and the feeling of joy.
Her paintings hang in a variety of private and public collections such as the National Art Museum of Sport, the United States Information Agency, Monmouth Medical Center, and of course, the Niarchos villa in the Aegean.
"A dialogue is created between me and my paintings. We get to know each other through the process talking with works, images, and emotions," says the artist.
Suzanne Osterweil Weber is a true and talented artist with that sense of urgency, a need to communicate through creating. Equally, the emotional input behind her brush evokes an empathetic impact on her audience.