SUZANNA VANGELOV

The colour white forms the foundation of Suzanna Vangelov’s new paintings. It is not a sharp white but a textural, dappled hue like the silver-grey of Nordic light with its low angles and gentle day to night transitions. Additional colours flow warmth in from the sides or emerge from the centre of the canvas, bringing soft curves and gentle openings into the pale surfaces.

To allow a wide berth for physical movement, Vangelov works on the floor and spends much time manipulating paint, at times adding more water to allow the undercoat to become visible and using her hands to move it across unbound swathes of canvas. On occasion she will stretch her canvas layers onto a frame. New shapes and forms are cut from the surface with sewing shears and assembled into an abstracted collage stitched together by hand. A healing salve of layered rabbit skin glue mixed with her pigments gives the finished work an overall sense of stilled movement that reflects the transformative journey of making.

Throughout the development of the paintings in Blue Puss Flying, ideas on female sexuality and beauty explored by writers Gerda Lerner, Bri Lee and Regena Thomashauer, filtered down into Vangelov’s creative approach. Breaking free from the artistic and bodily constraints historically put in place by patriarchal systems, here Vangelov allows her work to retain a sense of freedom. The cut-out pieces keep their raw edges, the tactile creases and folds remaining in the skin-like surface are reminiscent of the curves and dips of the female body. The stitching together can be seen as a form of reclamation and healing rather than an infliction of pain.

Coming from a family of makers, Vangelov’s well-honed techniques stem from a long line of people who placed practical elements of construction at the forefront of their working life. Her mother was a seamstress, constantly cutting and folding fabrics, while her father was a sheet metal worker with Macedonian heritage. A passion he maintained at home was keeping pigeons, and throughout her childhood, Vangelov shared her backyard with the hundreds of birds he tended – an experience that continues to show up decades later in the birds she often includes as recurring motifs in her paintings.

Working from a sun-filled studio surrounded by eucalypts, the shapes cast by nature frequently find their way into Vangelov’s work, particularly the negative spaces in between branches and the light filtering through leaves. Elongated rock formations on the coast near her home also serve as inspiration and she is a keen observer of the lines carved out by rocks and shells scraping across their smooth surfaces, made so after thousands of years of the ocean ebbing and flowing.

Despite their distinctly abstract façades, it is clear Vangelov’s paintings are imbued with profound meaning. They speak of a deep appreciation for the visual impact of colour and texture, a growing understanding of complex female experience and the inherent value of making things by hand. Now at the culmination of its long journey of creation, Blue Puss Flying celebrates the beauty of nature, femininity and the reclamation of a newfound freedom.

–  Essay by Briony Downes, September 2024