Susana Espinoza

BiographyBorn in Valparaiso, Chile, Susana Espinoza is a graphic designer, oil painter, and sculptor best known for her geometric encaustic paintings. After earning her B.A. in Graphic Design from the Catholic University of Valparaiso, Espinoza came to Canada in 1976 to settle in Calgary. While her work is explosively colourful, it contrasts the temperatures of hues, and dark with bright. She constructs many of her works by layering pigments inside fluid suspensions—gleaming, semi-translucent superimpositions she calls “floating colour.” Upon many of these works she attaches colourful, button-like domes that resemble blobs of paint, or leafy, grassy projections whose organic shapes soften the industrial gloss of the works.

Describing her project, she says, “I am taking advantage of new technological developments in pigments, [media], and supports. Working with one hue at a time, in a minimalistic composition, I am trying to understand what makes a color beautiful—how do we magnify its presence, how does it affect us, and how can it be portrayed as an independent entity?” Yet some of Espinoza’s work stands apart from her floating colours; her tactile textural series focuses on contrasting transparency and opaqueness.

Espinoza has enjoyed many solo exhibitions, particularly in Edmonton’s Peter Robertson Gallery and Calgary’s Fosbrooke Gallery. The Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Calgary Olympic Park, GWL Realty Advisors of Calgary, and many private owners around the world have collected her work.