"Fellow Human", 2021
Oil on Canvas
20” x 20” (51 x 51 CM)
"I have always felt a deep satisfaction from painting people. No one in particular: just people, glorious strangers. One feedback I get a lot is “I love it but wouldn’t buy it because I don’t like to have someone I don’t know hanging on my wall looking back at me”. Few things give me a deeper feeling of disconnect from my fellow humans then this consistent feedback. Before anything: a painting is a painting, period. Secondly: what could be more interesting then another human being? Particularly if you don’t know her? And especially if she’s looking right back at you?" - Suzanna Schlemm
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Suzanna Schlemm is a Brazilian figurative artist distinguished by the poetry of her images and her impeccable technique. She works primarily with oil paint, but is also fluent in different media like drawing, watercolor, collage and, recently, cyanotype. Suzanna always works from observation.
“I paint from observation. I never considered any other kind of painting: the world is more than enough material for me.”
She moved to NYC in 2001 to study painting, after ten years in advertising as a copywriter. She studied at the New York Studio School whereshe was awarded multiple scholarships. She took various classes at The School of Visual Arts, The New York Art Students League and Parsons The New School of Design, thriving on the city’s intense creative energy. A vital part of her art education was a workshop with painter Alex Kanevsky in 2015, in Madrid.
Since 2019 she is a Guild Member of the Silvermine Art Center in New Canaan, Connecticut. In 2020 she was awarded the prestigious Mercedes Matter prize by her very alma mater, the New York Studio School. Suzanna lives and works in Darien, CT and New York City.