Suus Kooijman (1960) studied at the HKU. In addition to painting on a flat surface, she looks for possibilities in which she can work spatially in her paintings. In her work, rhythm, space and matter are brought together into a unity for which the word painting does not adequately cover the load. She herself prefers to speak of wall objects or reliefs. The core of her work is simplicity and structure. The wall reliefs are made according to a unique process. Polyether parts are coated with a mixture of, among other things, beeswax, resin and pigment.
Suus' works are mainly made of beeswax. She builds it up layer by layer. She does not immediately have an image in her head of how it will turn out, but works from her feeling and allows the work to arise organically. In this way she continues to surprise not only herself but also the viewer. She places it on a block of wood that itself is layered to reinforce the layering of her work. Her work is coated making it impact resistant, the work can also be hung in the sun. The warm beeswax, the pigments and the layers build up into a performance that Suus herself often does not know where it will lead. At least, in the beginning. It sometimes takes a while for the performance to show itself. Everything hides in a background that, when she scrapes off the layers, brings out an image. Does a landscape, a field, a person appear? Suus works through the layers and is amazed time after time.
As the process progresses, she can steer more and intervene in the matter. A landscape that presents itself to us often carries unknown meanings. She tries to discover and investigate those meanings and also leaves room for the other. Only Suus himself knows what ultimately takes place in the bottom layer of these images.
