World Fine Art Professionals and their Key-Pieces, 46 - Suzanne Bo
Last summer Suzanne Bo painted live at Pulchri Art Society in The Hague. When I met her, she was well advanced with a large canvas with a big head on it. It was difficult to say whether it was a man or a woman. The right eye was a bit lower then the left and a little worn out. And beaten blue, it seemed.
The live painting in Pulchri was quite some time underway. ‘The work remains a month in the restaurant’, Suzanne said. ‘People can buy the work by doing an opening bid starting with 200 euros.’ Her two dogs kept an eye on the painting and the people in the restaurant.
Intuitively
The werk is representative of the painted work of Suzanne Bo. She painted a series of this kind of large heads. ‘I try to paint the inside of man. It is intuitive. The portrait is not ‘right’. The heads are indeed skewed and there is often a jaded, blurred vision. Suzanne: ‘’It occurs naturally, first there is the painting, then the story.’
‘On the outside you can not see how people feel and be. The outside is sometimes a pretty picture. The inside you cannot see. There is often more going on than you might think at first glance’, Suzanne explains. The inside that she explores extends to the bony inside: skulls. They figure prominently in another part of her work.
Skulls
Her objects, preparations of animal skulls and papier-mâché, are half human, half animal. ‘I already saved skulls when I was a kid. I went on with it. Gradually I started to make objects with it. With a papier-mâché bodice and the head of a bird or a goat or another animal.’
She makes these objects also with textile, leather, wood and found objects. The creations are, like the paintings, in one way or another incomplete, somewhat affected. She uses her knowledge of textiles also to produce creations for Lichel van den Ende, performance artist at art events. She also moves there as a model, a performer.
Hatchery
I browse through the documentation and picture folders that lie on a table. I see beautiful photo scenes. A goat skull with a wig and, on top, a young duckling, entitled “Hatchery”, and a preparation, a goose with a funnel on his head, next to him the skeleton of a pigeon, titled “Foie gras”.
Another lined dog comes in. Bo’s dogs and the new dog greet each other enthousiastically. They are released and allowed to play with each other.
Bo followed the Vrije Academie in The Hague and is an active member of Pulchri Art Society on the Lange Voorhout. On the last question, about the philosophy behind her work, she gives a short and strong answer: ‘Art is for me the ultimate freedom.’
