Born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1971, Suzanna holds a Bachelor's degree in Communications and worked as a copywriter in advertising for ten years before moving to New York City to pursue her lifelong interest in painting. There, she was accepted as a full-time student at the New York Studio School, a program she complemented with numerous classes at different schools, curating her own education and thriving on the city’s intense creative energy. In 2016, she was accepted into a workshop with renowned painter Alex Kanevsky and crowdfunded her way to Madrid, where the classes took place. Over the years, Suzanna has consistently shown her paintings in various group and solo exhibitions in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Connecticut, and New York. She now lives in Connecticut, and her work hangs in multiple collections around the world.
Statement
🇺🇸 My paintings tell the stories of an imaginary tribe of women, deeply intertwined with their land. They embody ancestors, archetypes and mythological figures that flow on a subtly altered frequency. In their world, animals are kin and guardians, and what we refer to as magic is simply their everyday life.
The imagery in my paintings comes to me as if channeled from a land that actually exists and where I find a familiar sense of quietness and protection. Since I was a child, I have felt watched and held by a benign motherly presence every time I entered the forest, which was often, as I was born and raised in Brazil. The canvas reflects these inner landscapes, which are initially blurry, but become more vivid as I work. Memory, identity and connection are hidden in plain sight and painting has became a constant quest for clarity.
I usually work with oil paint on large canvases, grounded on the tradition of figurative painting and evolving in the direction of the disruptive realism I am trying to achieve. I often overlap scenes that are painted from observation with visions that hide just behind the veil of reality: this juxtaposition delivers a kind of truth that feels more real to me than reality alone ever did.
🇧🇷 Minhas pinturas contam a história de uma tribo imaginária de mulheres, vivendo de forma profundamente entrelaçada com a terra que habitam. Elas são ancestrais, arquétipos e figuras mitológicas que fluem em uma frequência sutilmente alterada: animais são familiares e guardiões, e o que para nós seria considerado magia, para elas é uma parte natural da vida cotidiana.
As imagens em minhas pinturas chegam até mim como se canalizadas de uma terra que realmente existe e onde encontro uma sensação familiar de quietude e proteção. Desde criança, sempre me senti observada e acolhida por uma presença benigna maternal toda vez que entrava na floresta, o que era frequente. A tela reflete essas paisagens interiores que inicialmente são turvas, mas se tornam mais nítidas à medida que trabalho. Memória, identidade e conexão se escondem em plena luz do dia: a pintura se tornou uma busca constante por definição.
Eu pinto com tinta a óleo em telas grandes, ancorada na tradição da pintura figurativa e evoluindo na direção do realismo disruptivo que procuro alcançar. Frequentemente sobreponho cenas pintadas a partir da observação com visões que se escondem por atrás do véu da realidade: essa justaposição revela um mundo mais verdadeiro do que aquele que a realidade, sozinha, procura nos mostrar, mas não dá conta.