Suzanne Gibbs is the Traditional Artist Spotlight winning artist for the month of November 2021. She is an award-winning artist originally from the United Kingdom but is now primarily based in Northern California, USA.
Suzanne’s Solo Art Exhibition will be featured on the website for the month of November 2021. The gallery will promote Suzanne and her work on the Fusion Art website, individual online press releases to hundreds of outlets, email blasts to over 6,500+ buyers, collectors, galleries and art professionals, in online event calendars, art news websites and through the gallery’s extensive social media outlets. Fusion Art’s objective is to promote the Artist Spotlight winning artists, worldwide, to art professionals, gallerists, collectors and buyers.
Please read Suzanne’s Artist Biography below as she describes her history and inspiration in her own words. Scroll to the bottom of the page to see her exhibition.
If you are interested in purchasing any of these award-winning pieces, or to see more of Suzanne’s work, please visit her website.
Also, please visit Fusion Art’s YouTube Channel to see Suzanne’s Solo Art Exhibition Video.
Thank you to all the artists who participated in the Artist Spotlight competition and congratulations to Suzanne and the other Artist Spotlight winning artists.
Artist Biography
Suzanne was born in England and spent her early childhood living on a barge on the river Thames with her father (sculptor), mother (dress designer), brother and 2 sisters. She went to school in London, then moved up North to the Countryside.
Suzanne gained sponsorship and was awarded a place on the AFS student exchange program at 17, where she spent a year in CA, USA with a host family and graduated High School. She returned to the UK, inspired to study Art at degree level, became a freelance artist, before going on to teach.
Suzanne was the Director of Art for over 20 years at Gordon’s School. In 2004 Suzanne rekindled her passion for California and bought just under 20 acres of land in Northern California to build her home and art studio.
Suzanne enjoys painting in both England and Northern California. Personally affected and touched by the tragic wildfires of Northern California, in 2019 she produce a 3 month solo art exhibition to raise thousands of dollars for the Red Cross. Suzanne is both interested in landscape and portraiture and has won awards for both. Last year her portrait of her sister going through Chemo for Cancer was shortlisted and exhibited with the Royal Society of Portrait Painters at the Mall Galleries in London.
Artist Statement
This and last year gave me time to reflect, analyze and focus on our psychological, emotional and mental health. Following my Mum’s acceleration of vascular dementia, I sadly found myself, like many others, forced to think more deeply about the elderly, loneliness and coping with mental issues. During lockdown, I was very fortunate to have the time and environment in which to paint and create a series of portraits recording my Mum with dementia before and after the lockdowns.
Like Rembrandt, the recordings were like a visual diary but on a psychological level, to capture the fear, vulnerability and confusion. Using the subject of portraiture, I began to question the concept of identity and its link to sense certainty and consciousness. I had worked on a painting a year earlier, of my sister undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. Displayed at the Mall Galleries, with the Royal Society of British Portrait Painters, Emmeline Downie wrote… ‘I think it is a compelling, beautiful painting. To me, it has a resolute feminist message at its heart. I also enjoy paintings where I feel someone’s personality. This image is particularly emotive because the vibrant person I perceive Sally to be is at odds with her debilitating disease.’
I realised then that my passion for painting, had become focused on exploring the psychological more than the physical state of the human condition. My aim is to create a body of work that engages the viewer to question, consider and empathise.
