Suze Schneider is a slowly emerging artist who has continued to paint, in between a combination of teaching art, running workshops, creating knitted and crocheted accessories, customizing garments, and collecting vintage wears.
She has a degree in Fine Art and her work is multi-disciplinary – combining painting, photography, digital art, and printmaking with a varied use of collage and textiles. She works in the abstract and has a strong focus on the exploration of materials and the building up of surfaces and textures. Her main influence is in exploring the conflict between what was once loved and now lies abandoned, neglected, rejected: the old and new, the loved vs. the forgotten, the young and beautiful vs. aging and decay.
Her work has been shown around England, in Amsterdam and Sens, France. Most recently she has shown pieces in New York, Zurich, Miami, and Barcelona through the Artbox Projects with which she continues to be involved. Her work is a mixture of observation and emotional responses, which may not be a cause for discussion on world events but they tell a part of her story as a woman and her daily experiences and emotional struggles, which may trigger a conversation between the artist, the artwork and the public.
She is represented by Hansford And Sons on their Emerging Artist Platform.
Hey Suze! If someone, that isn’t very familiar with art asks. How would you describe your art to people?
Suze: My work predominantly explores surface and texture. It is something I have always loved and been intrigued by and I think it was recognized initially through a love of fashion and textiles – of fabrics and how materials feel as well as look. I have described my work as excavations as I have spent years re-working canvases: extracting, carefully removing surfaces, building on top of these, and scratching away again. Thinking about it now, I recall that I started pasting paper and fabric on to a newly stretched canvas, as I found the process of beginning on a plain white, blank canvas too daunting. Histories and stories start to come through the excavation and in the scraping away to see what lies beneath. Histories and memories are revealed, new marks and stories created.
What’s the most challenging part of your artistic process? And how do you overcome it?
Suze: I think I tend to spend a great deal of time attempting to simplify my work, a metaphor for my life really – striving to be more minimalist, refine and reduce my use of marks and surfaces, trying to create something clean and simple, something new, for I feel I can overwork pieces. I attempt to overcome this by focussing on fast, spontaneous, automatic drawings. Thinking about how I use lines, reducing and restricting the marks and lines I make. I have just realized that one answer actually lies in overcoming the fear of the blank, white canvas and embracing space and whiteness.
How did you get inspired to combine painting, photography, digital art, and printmaking?
Suze: I tend to experiment in different media when I have a creative block and need new inspiration – hence my use of painting, photography, digital art, and printmaking. The work produced was really just a reference but as I acquired more reference material through print and photography, I realized they were something more and needed to be shared. I started to paste the prints and photographic images directly on to the canvas, incorporating them into my work.
Tell me more about your influence of old and new, the loved vs. the forgotten… and is there a message you are trying to send with each piece?
Suze: My work is inevitably about me. My own exploration of emotions and responses to life. My history, my joy, and yet sometimes despair. Sometimes loving and being loved, rejections in life, growing old and decaying. Life & death. The influence of old & new loved vs forgotten is all these things: living life, growing, changing, learning, and looking back.
How has your style changed or evolved over the years?
Suze: It is as though I have taken a walk and returned somewhere close to where I began. The subject matter is a continuation of my exploring urban and rural landscapes, with familiar themes: what captures my eye as I pass by? The peeling of paint, rusting metal, things in the process of decaying. I have always been interested in structures of buildings, doorways, the spaces between things. Seeing a construction through scaffolding or watching the process of destruction. I am interested in how things are made. How we are made. Since being a child I have been strangely fascinated by people’s discarded paraphernalia…… the item that was once so cherished and new, now discarded and unloved. I see beauty and sadness in these things.
My styles are varied but over the years I have created a vocabulary, a language that is mine. I have had and still have periods when I have focussed and explored color but I always come back to my dark, earthy, mainly monochrome pallet. My work and style have become a map of my life, gradually laid out around me and I feel at the happiest and most confident in my work now, today.
What is your most recent piece of art that you have enjoyed working on the most?
Suze: A triptych: three canvases that I had stacked up in my studio, untouched for years. I first experienced the feeling of working on the excavation, a dig with these pieces. So many years to carefully scrape back and explore. It was an emotional experience, discovering things long forgotten. It gave such pleasure retracing journeys and the reworked paintings just seemed to ‘happen’ in unison.
What memorable responses have you had to your work?
Suze: The one that stands out is: “If that’s art, I’m the pope”. A comment overheard by the caretaker in an exhibition some years ago.
What is the best way to reach people that are interested in your art?
Suze: Websites: www.suzeschneider.com www.emergingartistplatform.com/suzeschneider http://www.artsy.net/artist/suze-schneider/works-for-sale
Instagram:
Studio: nd Floor, Chester, Cheshire,
Email: [email protected]
Are there any upcoming shows or workshops we should know about?
Suze: Due to the pandemic a couple of shows have had to be put on hold. There should have been one in Barcelona and one in Zurich through artbox.projects SWISSARTEXPO.
I have a two-page spread due to be published in July 2021 as part of an art directory through Capsules Books, Melbourne, Australia
I moved into a new studio one year ago and look forward to our lives no longer being on pause, enabling me to show and promote my work in my small gallery space, adjacent to the studio. I also look forward to running some small classes or workshops.
What’s next on the horizon for you?
Suze: I intend to focus on having more prints made of my work which will be available to buy. I would also like to start applying for funding and grants and possibly work on some collaborations with other mixed media artists.
Thank you!