Suzy Spence is a contemporary American painter based in New York City and Vermont, whose evocative equestrian portraits and hunt scenes weave historical and contemporary influences.

Her equestrian portraits and hunt scenes were first exhibited at The Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles in 1997, when Colin DeLand of American Fine Arts, Co. decorated one of the hotel’s bedrooms with her work in an early iteration of an international art fair. She grew up on the coast of Maine, studied at Smith College, Parsons School of Design (New York and Paris), The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and earned an MFA from The School of Visual Arts in New York. Her work is in private and public collections worldwide, including the archives of Colin De Land’s American Fine Arts Co., held at The Smithsonian Archives of American Art and Bard College Library, the collection of The New York Foundation for the Arts, M HKA Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Belgium, The Grazer Kunstverein, Graz Austria, the Glarner Kunstverein, Glarus, Switzerland, The Zillman Museum at The University of Maine, and the New England Museum of Contemporary Art (NNEMoCA).

“My paintings have always been a fantasy space for me, only loosely based in truth. I spend time observing nature like a plein air painter would, however I return to the studio not to record what I’ve seen, but to indulge my imagination. My core sensibility loves urban camp, dandyism and all things sartorial. I’m fascinated with personal presentation and theatricality, and it seems to linger in my figures. But I like to think my paintings possess their own logic, their own truth, and that each one preserves space for individual interpretation much like a poem does.”

-Suzy Spence