Suze Woolf

Suze Woolf has watched glaciers shrink and burned forests increase. At first, she painted beautiful landscapes but was compelled to portray their eco-disturbances. Portraits of individual trees became a metaphor for human impact. Despite anxiety, she sees unusual beauty. Fire-carved snags are all the same – carbonized, eaten away; yet different – fire physics and plant structure create sculpture. Painting is a meditation on climate crisis. Hiking through these burned forests, she also sees bark beetles' hieroglyphics. A book is a collection of messages, and incorporating raw materials from nature becomes another meditation on impact. Beetle-kill, like fire, is compounded by climate: heat- and drought-stressed trees are vulnerable; larvae don't freeze in warm winters. The bugs respond to the conditions we created. Suze works to confront climate in painting, paper casting, pyrography, installation and artist books. Like her best work, the results are beautiful and disturbing.

Biography

Suze Woolf’s work is about human relationships to nature. A painter, she explores a range of media from watercolor to paper-casting, from artist books to pyrography and installation--sometimes all together. Her background ranges from fine art to computer graphics and interface design.

Her installation “State of the Forest,” based on 15 years of painting individual burned trees, is currently part of the Environmental Impact II tour from 2019-2024.

She has exhibited throughout the U. S. West but also in across the US and Canada. Her work is in regional public collections as well as many private ones. She has received awards from arts organizations, universities and colleges, residencies in Zion, Glacier, Capitol Reef and North Cascades National Parks, the Grand Canyon Trust; and art colonies such as the Banff Centre, the Vermont Studio Center, Willowtail Springs, Jentel, Playa, Centrum, Mineral School, and Sitka Center for Art & Ecology.

To purchase one of these pieces, please email us at geneva@gallerystrega.com.