In the autumn and winter of 2014/15, the artist took part in the Luxor International Painting Symposium in Egypt. It was a time of rich exchange with a number of invited artists from different countries and Egypt itself. They stayed in the Winter Palace in Luxor, and the event concluded with a joint exhibition there. Many of the works shown here were inspired by visual experiences that Susanne Zuehlke had in Egypt. As a result, a number of drawings were created in front of the motif. What interested the artist was the tectonic structure of verticals and horizontals that resulted from the tree trunks towering in the hotel garden and their shadows. It was the contour lines of seated colossal statues of Egyptian kings that cascade down. It was the visual structure of the object, not the narrative content, that attracts the artist's attention. These themes have long been the subject of Zuehkle's artistic work: color, form, and light. 

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Susanne Zuehlke is a colorist, a painter of colors. She worked her way to this position over the years, circling around representational themes, landscapes above all else. Representation is still the trigger for her ideas for paintings. Her plans are recorded in small-format sketchbooks with pencil, in which the artist focuses on the composition. There are also preliminary drawings with representational references on the fine muslin cloth on which the painted compositions will unfold. But it is never the continuum of a landscape or a complete scenario that finds its expression in the painted picture. It is the abstraction from what is seen that goes into the work. Creating forms from color, creating images with light, relating color chords to one another and producing spatial structures on the painting support - these are the artistic concerns that Zuehlke consistently pursues in her work. Each work stands alone, but the characteristics of Zuehlke’s painterly approach are also evident in the grouping of several works.