Susanna Coffey

Susanna Coffey
Susanna J. Coffey (born 1949) is an American artist and educator. She is the F. H. Sellers Professor in Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and lives and works in New York City. She was elected a member the National Academy of Design in 1999.
Life
Coffey was born in New London, Connecticut in 1949. She received a Bachelor of Fine Art degree magna cum laude from the University of Connecticut in 1977 and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Yale School of Art in 1982.
Coffey's work investigates normative values of beauty and gender asking questions like "What is a beautiful appearance? Why do conventionally gendered images involve caricature? Can inchoate feeling-states be adequately portrayed?"
Coffey is best known for her paintings of heads―often self-portraits, such as her Self Portrait, Versace (Canal) Scarf in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art. Like many of her paintings, this 1996 self-portrait is a frontal view, lit from behind. Hearne Pardee describes her practice in the Brooklyn Rail:
Collections
Coffey's work is held at a wide range of institutions, including Akron Art Museum in Akron, Ohio, Yale University Art Gallery, the Danforth Art Museum in Framingham MA, the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, the Brauer Museum of Art in Valparaiso, Indiana, the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, the Honolulu Museum of Art in Honolulu, Hawaii, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the National Academy of Design in New York City, the Rockford Museum in Rockford, Illinois, the Weatherspoon Art Gallery in Greensboro, North Carolina and the Williams College Museum of Art in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Awards
Susanna Coffey has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. Coffey received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Artist x Artist award, a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, the Aeschylus Medal awarded by the city of Eleusis Greece, and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Foundation Studio Program Award. Coffey has received honorary degrees from The University of Connecticut School of Fine Art and the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts.
Further reading
Acoustiguide narration, The National Gallery of Art, on Judith Leyster’s Self Portrait
Article, “Artists Quarantine With Their Art Collections” Stephen Maine, Hyperallergic, May 23, 2020
Book, Night Painting, Susanna Coffey MAB Books, editor Brice Brown, a selection of landscape paintings with writings by Dr. Carol Becker, Brice Brown, Jane Coffey, Jane Kenyon, Jennifer Samet and Mark Strand 2019
Book, 50 Contemporary Women Artists, editors John Goslee and Heather Zises, Schiffer Publishing, Ltd., 2018
Two Coats of Paint Interview with Sangram Majumdar
Review of Elemental by Hearne Pardee The Brooklyn Rail February 2014
Book, ″In Residence, Contemporary Artists at Dartmouth The Hood Museum of Art″, Dartmouth College, 2014
Review of From Life by John Yau, Hyperallergic November 25, 2012
Review of Apophenia by Cate McQuaid, The Boston Globe, September 25, 2012
Review of Nocturne by John Goodrich, City Arts April 3, 2012
Review of Pavers, City Arts, John Goodrich, January 12, 2011
Book, ″Selected Contemporary American Figurative Painters″, Editor, Qimin Liu, Tianjin Peoples Fine Arts Publishing House, China, 2010
Review of Night Paintings 1995-2010, Jeremy Bliss, New City, Chicago, April 22, 2010
Catalog, ″Artist’s Response: Portraits and Self-Portraits″, from exhibition, Unexpected Reflections: The Portrait Reconsidered at Meridian Gallery, 2009, San Francisco CA, by Terri Cohn
Review of Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820-2009, The New York Times, Ken Johnson, July 22, 2009
Article, “Looking at Herself” Kathleen Edgecomb, The New London Day, December 8, 05
Review of Alpha Gallery show, Cate McQuaid, The Boston Globe, November 19, 2004
Review of Women of the Academy, Ken Johnson, The New York Times, Summer 2003
Catalog, Susanna Coffey: Recent Work, Strand, Mark, New York, André Emmerich, 2003
Catalog, Susanna Coffey, Tibor De Nagy Gallery, New York, Tibor De Nagy Gallery, 2001
Catalog Susanna Coffey, Tibor De Nagy Gallery, 2001 essay by Michael Rooks, Poem, "In Sky" by Susan Wheeler
Catalog, Susanna Coffey Studio Art Exhibition Program, Dartmouth College, September, 1998 Essays by Michael Rooks and Eileen Myles
References
External links
Artists Quarantined with Their Art, Hyperallergic June 20th 2020
Interview with Erica Hess for the podcast I like Your Work
WYBC Radio Interview: Brainard Carey with Susanna Coffey
Interview on Gorky's Granddaughter
Hyperallergic conversation with Susanna Coffey
Susanna Coffey on Pierre Bonnard
Catalog from Susanna Coffey's “Going to Ground” at the University of Tulsa
Why Give a Name to It? by John Yau in Hyperallergic
An Interview of Susanna Coffey with Rich Fisher on Tulsa Public Radio
Susanna Coffey Studies the Nature of Portraiture by John Yau in Hyperallergic
4 Artists on Expressing Love Through Their Work on Artsy
1949 births
Living people
People from New London, Connecticut
American women painters
American portrait painters
Artists from New York City
Painters from Connecticut
21st-century American women artists
University of Connecticut alumni
Yale School of Art alumni