Susan Te Kahurangi King at Andrew Edlin Gallery

Susan Te Kahurangi King doesn’t speak with words, but shares much of her world through extraordinary drawings.

Born in New Zealand in 1951, King stopped speaking around age four but drew prolifically through her thirties, when, suddenly, she stopped. In 2008, almost twenty years later, she resumed her work, picking up where she left off. Since then, King has continued her remarkable output of drawings in graphite, pencil, crayon, ink, and pens of various types. Intense, whimsical, wide-ranging, and haunting, her references and subjects dare us to interpret them in any logical way—and we fail. Still, we remain engaged and intrigued by their skillful audaciousness.

King’s family has supported her art making with unwavering faith and affection. One of a dozen children in a tumultuous household, her mother saved and preserved her drawings in trunks and cases. Some were dated and annotated. They have all been organized and catalogued. King’s drawings and sketchbooks range from simple images to rich, fully drawn pages alive with complex textures that defy interpretation. Each piece reveals a profoundly active imagination and hints at the depth of King’s output, offering viewers a peek into her worlds and those she has yet to reveal.