Suzy Birstein

My art amalgamates old world majesty with contemporary charisma: think Queen Nefertiti meets Carmen Miranda.

I create figures, mostly women, from fired clay infused with aged and lustred surfaces. The sculptures inspire paintings using oils, cold wax and collage.

I am working on two series:

“Ladies-Not-Waiting” reference Old Master paintings: Velasquez, Kahlo, Manet..
“Tsipora” is my Hebrew name meaning Bird. This series, loosely self portraits, embrace an exotic earthiness living within a poetic imagination.

Both series address The Gaze: Looking Inward, Facing Outward. They speak to nesting and transcendence, the mirror and reflection, celebrating the individual and universal.

Suzy Birstein creates figurative sculptures and paintings that amalgamate old world majesty with contemporary charisma: think Queen Nefertiti meets Carmen Miranda or Ganesha meets Lady Gaga.

Her sculptures, mostly women, are created from fired clay, infused with aged and lustred surfaces, glazes, oils, gold leaf…to this she adds repurposed symbolic elements. Her paintings in oil, cold wax and collage riff upon and reference her sculptures.

Suzy is an Honours Graduate from Emily Carr University. She has travelled extensively throughout North America, Europe and Cambodia, attending and leading master workshops.