Stairway to Heaven Painting

Shushanik Karapetyan is a New York-based artist born in Yerevan, Armenia. Her work has been exhibited at venues such as the National Association of Women Artists, Governors Island, BRIC, LIC Arts Open, Site: Brooklyn Gallery, Atamian Hovsepian Curatorial Practice, Brooklyn Waterfront Artist Coalition, Vital Arts Studios Gallery, and FlatFile Gallery. Drawing from her practice as a Gestalt psychotherapist, Shushanik Karapetyan approaches painting with an emphasis on attunement and responsiveness to personal experience and environmental influences. Her process is fluid yet intentional—each piece begins with a structure, whether a landscape or the human form, and evolves organically through spontaneous choices in brushwork, color, texture, and movement. Repetition plays a significant role in her work, whether through pointillist strokes or sweeping marks. Shushanik finds inspiration in the shifting hues of sunsets and the vivid tones of flowers encountered on her walks. These impressions weave into her paintings, mirroring her exploration of contrast and balance. A recurring Gestalt theme in her work is the concept of the "contact-boundary"—the space where individuals connect with and separate from others and themselves. Shushanik explores the contact-boundary in her art through color, where some boundaries appear to blur and others maintain a strong contrast. Just as Gestalt therapy integrates different parts into a unified whole, her artistic process embraces duality: structured, hard-edged compositions often give way to fluid, expressive pointillism; dark, introspective works are followed by luminous, airy pieces.