Draft:Suzy Spence

Suzy Spence

Susan Deborah Spence (born 1969 ) is an American painter identified with New York City’s downtown feminist art and neo-expressionism movements.

Early life and education

Spence was born in Boston Massachusetts. Her parents, Albert William Spence III and painter Marcia Boyd Stremlau, relocated from the upper east side of New York City to coastal Maine during the back-to-the-land-movement in the 1970s. Spence grew up in Belfast and Bar Harbor where she credits the influence of regional figurative painters Marsden Hartley, Alex Katz, and Andrew Wyeth.

Education

Spence attended Smith College in 1987 where she studied western art history for one semester before transferring to Parsons School of Design in New York to receive a BFA in Studio Art in 1992. She studied studio practice and art theory with Rona Pondick, Maureen Connor, Judy Glantzman and Mira Schor. Spence attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine in 1996, with fellow students William Pope L. and Jennie Jones. She created her first fox hunting themed paintings while studying with visiting artists Jessica Stockholder, Carroll Dunham, Nan Goldin and Jacob Lawrence. Spence received an MFA from School of Visual Arts in New York in 1998.

Institutional Critique and Feminist Art

Spence worked in the curatorial department at New Museum (1992-1994) under founder Marcia Tucker as a curatorial assistant. The museum's experimental format at the time had no permanent collection and practiced participatory management in which all staff, including ticket takers and museum guards, attended regular curatorial meetings. Spence became aware of the museum's retrospective of artist Ana Mendieta and activism in reaction to her death.

Early Exhibitions

Spence exhibited graphite drawings of actress Tori Spelling and Princess Diana at Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles in 1997 with Colin de Land who gave Spence her first solo exhibition at American Fine Arts Co. in Soho in 1998. The exhibition reviewed in The New York Times by Grace Glueck, Visions of Grandeur, had paintings inspired by artist George Stubbs, and portraits derived from society pages in W Magazine and Town and Country Magazine.Pat Hearn and Matthew Marks included Spence in the survey exhibition Painting Now and Forever (1) in Chelsea.

Museum Exhibitions

Spence was included in the U.K. traveling exhibition Accelerator alongside artists Jeremy Deller and Bernadette Corporation in 1999. Accelerator traveled to The Arnolfini, Bristol; Southampton City Art Gallery; and Oldham Art Gallery. Spence was included in Center for Maine Contemporary Art’s biennial exhibition in 2018.

Notable Works

In 2019 Spence created two ten by twelve foot paintings of equestrian clad women in black tophats: Widow XII and Widow XIII for her solo exhibition Death Rider at Brooklyn’s Cathouse Proper located at 524 Court Street Brooklyn, curated by artist and filmmaker David Dixon.

Spence’s Monumental Widows were exhibited again during the summer of 2024 at The Bundy Modern, an international style museum designed by architect Harlow Carpenter in Waitsfield Vermont.

Art Criticism

Spence wrote art reviews for David Cohen’s Art Critical Magazine, and Mira Schor and Susan Bee's M/E/A/N/I/N/G magazine. Spence helped to create The Review Panel at The Brooklyn Library which was a forum for live art criticism in the Dweck Auditorium from 2015 - 2021. Spence was the Executive Publisher of Artcritical magazine during those years

Marriage

Spence was married to Greek author and educator George Sarrinikolaou from 2004 to 2018.