Opening: July 16, 2-4 pm. Introductions and artist talk at 2:30 pm. All welcome.
Hands of the Horsemen brings together works from different periods of the artist’s long career. Loaned from the collections of the New Brunswick Museum, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, private collectors and the artist’s studio, this exhibition places the artist’s most recent work in the context of 20 years of her art and confirms her continued interest in the androgynous and anonymous figure.
Always creating a subtle and evocative space from the surface area upon which she works, Hill’s figures seem to be extracted, scratched, pasted, torn or collaged into being. In exquisite contrast with her very direct method of working, her figures are delicately suspended, poised in time and motion. They are figurative gestures that have agency and exist with consequence. Hill’s figures seem to metaphorically struggle with the singularity of experience, wrestling as does the artist with existential questions while formally engaging with a line, an edge, a frame or their own shadow. When writing about the body of work, Singular from the mid 2000s, Peter Larocque observed that “while we may live in social situations and may interact, to lesser or great degrees with others, ultimately, we remain as parallel singularities delineated by the borders of our own perception and will”.
Suzanne Hill lives in Rothesay, N.B. A graduate of Mount Allison and McGill Universities, she has exhibited nationally and internationally. For many years she taught art in the public Schools in Saint John. Her work has been the inspiration for cross disciplinary creative productions with poet Ann Compton and the Atlantic Ballet. Hill has worked tirelessly for the advancement of the visual arts and has had a significant voice in the cultural affairs of the province. She has served on the Artsnb Board, the Board of Directors of the NB Museum, and the Sheila Hugh Mackay Foundation. She was the 1999 recipient of the SHMF Strathbutler Award, and 2016 recipient of the NB Lieutenant-Governor General’s Award. Her art is in the New Brunswick Art Bank, the Canada Council Art Bank, UNB, NB Museum, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, the University of Maine, the Governor General of Canada, the Canadian War Museum and the Department of External Affairs. Recent exhibitions include Unstable Boundaries, 2019, Spicer/Merrifield Gallery, The Work Before, 2021, Sunbury Shores Art and Nature Centre and the Saint John Airport.
Suzanne Hill will give an artist talk at 2:30 pm on July 16, 2022 accompanied by her long time gallery dealer and friend, Peter Buckland. Everyone is welcome – Admission is free – refreshments will be served.
