Suzy Spence

Suzy Spence: DEATH RIDER brings together two large-scale paintings and several smaller works by Suzy Spence in an exhibition that continues her exploration of death and sex through the metaphor of drag hunting.

Her largest paintings to date, "The New Yorker (Widow VIII") and "Death Rider (Widow IX)", both 2019, are each nine by twelve feet. These commanding, frontal portraits of sidesaddle riders are rendered from the shoulders up, with equestrian stock ties wrapped tightly around their necks. The women’s veils, composed of black paint drips raining down from Victorian top hats, evoke a macabre update to Alex Katz’s iconic "Blue Umbrella 2" (1972) in which Ada seems to weep with the raindrops. Building on Katz’s graphic approach, Spence combines Frankenthaler-inflected soaking and staining with drawing, using broad, industrial-sized brushes and sponges to achieve an all-over effect with an expressionistic bravado that bids the individual riders to emerge.

Suzy Spence – Artist and Curator and the creator of The Online Archive for Womanhouse – and Irina Milahache, Author and Professor of Museum Studies at the University of Toronto, join Coral in an interdisciplinary discussion of the woman's role in writing culinary history.

The University of Maine Museum of Art has acquired a painting by artist Suzy Spence. Suzy Spence’s 2017 flashe painting on paper, Death (Rider), was acquired by the Museum for its permanent collection.