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SuZahn King
COSTA RICA
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“Realism seems to be the one style I do the best.”
Painters are poets with paint and canvas; painters are sometimes the voice for those no one sees, no one speaks to, the forgotten, the faceless, and the modern-day untouchable, the disenfranchised. They speak through their paintings and live them over and over again every day throughout its creation.
Flowers in my garden | Acrylic
$2,500
60 X 48
This is a composite painting from a large library of plant and flower photos that I have put together over the years. These are typical plants that grow here in the southern part of Costa Rica. The garden keeps changing all the time depending on what has died and something new will always surprise you when it pops up!
SuZahn really wishes to be able to define in ten words or less the reason why paints. She finds it arduous to be able to express what inspires her and where her motivation comes from. However, one thing that she can always tell without even a moment of doubt is that she loves to paint and can always manage to find a reason to pick up that paintbrush.
roadside fruit and veggies stand. | Acrylic
$2,500
48 X 60
This is a typical fruit and vegetable stand where the local farmers sell their produce, very fresh, wide variety (which I admit I don't know how to cook much of it but if I asked, they would tell me.) This is a rather large stand; some are not quite this large on average.
The best way to explain SuZahn is that she’s a ‘paint junkie.’ She loves to paint and can paint 10 hours a day and be happy. SuZahn can’t really say there is one artist that has influenced her work. She admires Lucien Freud, Andrew Wyeth, Ralph Goings, and Winslow Homer for their realistic style of painting and painters such as Victor Vaserly, whose abstract paintings intrigued her.
“A lot of my paintings are intended to make a statement, to speak to your inner soul and silently scream the pain of those you do not want to see.”
What the subject of the painting has to have is composition, color, lighting, and something that for that moment, tells her that it would make a good painting. That can happen with a group of plants and flowers, a seascape, people in a setting, marine life, and anything else that, for that moment, lets her decide that she would paint it.
Mr. Jones | Acrylic
$1,000
30 X 39
"You know something is happening, don't you Mr. Jones." Bob Dylan's lyrics popped up in my head when I finished this painting. This is part of a series of homeless and disenfranchised people I have completed. I once owned a single-occupancy hotel and saw firsthand the meaning of the 'streets' of a big city.
This is painted on Arches, 300 lb Press Paper. A brook in Northern-California wanted to capture the motion of the water and the composition of the rocks.
California brook | Watercolor
$500
18 X 24
Even the selection of the size of canvas has a lot to do with the subject matter she is painting– some deserve a small canvas and others a very large one so that the image grabs your attention. Believe it or not, it can make a huge difference in the final outcome and the way spectators perceive it.
“I have also explored creating 3D paintings, free-standing abstract, and abstract paintings that look as though they are 3D through the use of shape, shading, lighting, and colors.”
I strongly relate to what Bob Dylan once said, ‘I heard ten thousand whispering and nobody listening, I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughing, heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter, heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley.’
Things are changing so rapidly in the world we live in that what is here today may be gone tomorrow; money and the hustle and bustle of the fast-paced 23rd Century are rapidly changing the peaceful rural lifestyle of Costa Rica. SuZahn has digitally created a cartoon series of mystical creatures called the Popcorn family who all live in a large mushroom.
Exploding Box | Acrylic
$2,500
48 X 60
This is a freestanding construction and I was exploring the idea of making abstract constructions that would look 3D by the use of color and light. This is a flat canvas. I took a photo of it when I completed it, and hung it in my studio. Many people thought that the walls of the studio were part of the painting. I often sit with the photo for perspective!
SuZahn paints in acrylics on canvas because it is the only medium that mildew doesn’t attack. She used to do watercolors on paper but the watercolor paper doesn’t ‘live’ well in the jungle nor does any matting material. Her husband paints oils and again, that’s a media that doesn’t do well in this humid climate.
flowing | Photoshop
$500
This is a digitally created image so it's hard to state its dimension because it can be printed in any size that you would want. It is created from a large file of digital images, colors, and shapes that I maintain. From there, I choose an image, and then using Photoshop, I can distort, pull, tug, add other images, and create a whole new image- a couple of them actually. I went ahead and turned them into a free-standing construction.
For about 15 years SuZahn and her husband have resided in Costa Rica about 100 miles from the Panama border– it is a jungle with a lot of humidity. Prior to living here, SuZahn lived in California for many years where she attended Los Angeles City College, studying art, and transferred to UCLA for a short time-something about needing to go to work to make money to pay rent and eat seemed to get in the way of finishing her degree! She continued her art education by attending other colleges but has never formally gotten a degree.
This is a ground cover that grows here in Costa Rica during the rainy season. It's not very big, the leaves are about 2" long at the most but it adds great color to your garden.
Persian Ear ground cover | Acrylic
$1,000
34 X 28
“I am never at a loss for floral painting subject matter as my yard is full of flowers and plants so I do not have to go anywhere else.”
Happy Mushroom House | Photoshop
$1,000
Again, this is in print form-it is part of my family of Popcorn people that live in a big mushroom house. I have created about 20 different characters that go with this family, I even attempted to create an e-book for kids with these fun creatures. These are created from a large library of characters.
One of the jobs SuZahn had from 2000 to 2006 was with Nash Editions owned by Graham Nash, a musician, and a premier printer of limited fine art print editions. Over the years, most of her income has been derived from building and remodeling apartment rentals, and the construction of two self-storage facilities. SuZahn has also owned and operated a fresh seafood market and ran a Deli restaurant.
This was painted from a photograph that was taken in downtown Los Angeles in around 2004. We drove around Los Angeles photographing lots of amazing graffiti paintings on walls. Some of this work is really great artwork- we probably have over 1,000 photographs of graffiti taken from that period of time. I like this one so much, it hangs in my kitchen!
Doing Laundry | Acrylic
$2,500
40 X 30
A while back, a friend of theirs moved from Costa Rica back to Canada and left them with a huge library of over 200 plus art and art history books and she joked with her husband that with this collection of books, she could get an art history degree without leaving the house!
the morning after |Acrylic
$2,500
40 X 30
This painting was done from a black and white photograph taken in the 70s of my husband sitting in a bar in Guatemala after a hard night... Again the title is from the lyrics of Bob Dylan (I love his lyrics). I have done several paintings from black and white photographs-I actually like to work that way.
“Many of my paintings are created to record the history of the area I live in.”
SuZahn King
@The_Art_of_SuZahn
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