• Suzon Lagarde is an emerging painter, whose extensive practice is inherently one of self-portraiture, observing childhood memories, daydreaming and fleeting perceptions. Born in France in 1994, they’ve been living in the UK since 2016, embracing a nomadic lifestyle which recently saw them relocate to West Wales.

    Suzon paints to connect with the self and explore its multiplicity: drawing from experiences of being born different in an ableist world, derealisation and distress in childhood, navigating mood swings and consecutive perception changes as an adult. Aware of the limitation of wordy languages when addressing the complexity of life, they’ve chosen painting for its capacity to hold nuances and contradictions, to be conversation rather than a fixed message. Albeit highly personal, Suzon’s multi-layered paintings speak to the universal experience, weaving in the heavy and the joy, the traumatic and the beautiful, past experiences and renewed perspectives.

    Born with a limb difference and regularly hospitalised in their childhood, Suzon explores those singular and highly impacting experiences in their practice - painting as a vehicle with which revisiting traumatic reminiscences becomes possible, giving shapes to what was once lived in acute solitude, locked away inside one’s innerworld. These paintings reveal the subtly imposed taboos on difference and its mutilation in our highly normative societies, for it to finally be witnessed and collectively cared for.

    Suzon’s practice is intuitive and iterative, revisiting themes and shapes across time and medium, each piece in dialogue with its siblings in a non-hierarchical and permeable process of back and forth : sketchbooks inspire paintings, sculpture informs lifedrawing, dreams infuse reality and the observed feeds the imaginary. Suzon is continually creating, collecting and assembling painted feelings and visual motifs: painting is how they interact with and filter life.

    Their visual language is attentive to shifts in perceptions, aiming to preserve its fleeting quality and evasiveness. Colours playfully dance on the canvas, edges connect, shapes merge into one another, tuning into what feels right rather than what makes sense. Suzon expands these investigations to painting altered states of consciousness, derealisation, fainting episodes and questions how intertwined imagination and memories are, how to paint the past with honesty when all there is, is Present.

    Suzon returned to formal education in London in 2016 to undertake a Foundation Degree in Contemporary Portraiture, where they developed a painting practice working from life. Their oil and gouache paintings have been many times selected and awarded, notably at the Mall Galleries through the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours annual exhibitions. They shared their enthusiasm for painting from life on TV (Landscape Artist of the Year & Portrait Artist of the Year). They recently presented a second solo show in London, returning from 7 months backpacking from Europe to Nepal. Suzon regularly teaches in France and the UK.

  • To the attention of the jury,
    Dear Louise Giovanelli, Rachel Jones, Aubrey Levinthal, Dr. Ian Hartshorne and Henry Ward,

    This application only revealed to me further how much my practice is hungry for joining a program like the Apollo Painting School. Since I graduated in 2020, I’ve been working relentlessly to establish myself as a full-time practising artist. I’ve proven to myself I can work on my own, with painting persisting at the chore of my life regardless of circumstances, continuously developing and expanding.

    However, I feel a strong desire to take this growth much further. This first chapter has been an opportunity for me to plant seeds, to get to know myself and learn to believe in my art fully - I’ve grown a lot of love for what I create. I believe my paintings could evolve much further, and I trust that such a milestone in one’s journey can reach its full potential through opportunities like yours; a moment to reassess, explore and be pushed by feedback and conversations.

    My art education so far has been a wonderful opportunity to fall in love with painting from life and to start exploring my personal voice, but I haven’t yet received support in finding myself within the contemporary art world, which I now know myself ready for. After having nurtured the personal and intimate parts of my practice, I strive to articulate it into a wider cultural discourse, growing with and from current conversations and finding my place in a world where I know a voice like mine to still be underrepresented. Starting to paint my experience of limb difference, surgical violence and its taboos, has been tremendously transformative on a personal level and I trust such representations and new visual explorations to be beneficial to people with similar experiences or more globally for those invested in Art’s attempts at processing memories, traumatic reminiscences, discrepancies between inner perceptions and what can be shared with the outside world.

    English is not my first language, and despite my fluency, my practice longs for more precise words to help me think it further; and with renewed words, I can only imagine developing a revivified and more agile visual language. The Apollo Painting School seems to precisely encourage what I yearn for: high dynamism between discourse and visual exploration, individual growth and collective exchange, personal voice and global context.

    After a couple of years on the road, I’ve decided to stay in West Wales for the upcoming seasons, making the most of having a fixed studio again. I’m fully mobile and flexible, my life is geared towards developing my painting practice and I would fully seize this opportunity if you were to accept me on the program. I’d look forward to discovering Manchester and Latina, discovering their specific cultures, meeting peers and aspiring to cultivate strong conversations, during and beyond those three months.

    Many thanks for taking my application into consideration,

    Suzon

  • suzon.lagarde@gmail.com
    07709 789185

    at Create Space studios
    Heol Las Fawr
    Y Ferwig, Aberteifi SA43 1QA

    Living in West Wales, between Newport, Pembrokeshire and Cardigan - settled status
    Born 26.06.1994 in Tours, France

    Solo exhibition

    • The Pause Before: London UK 2023
    • Opening, London UK 2022
    • A Painted Touch of Life, 2-person show, London UK 2019

    Group exhibition

    • Postcard project: paintings and poems around the world 2023
    • Looker's, London UK 2022
    • Now We Are Six, Islington Art Factory London UK 2021
    • The Big Studio Art Sale, the Arc Centre London 2021
    • The Mayfair Art Collective in October, The Iron Duke London 2021
    • A year of plein air painting, The Well London UK 2021
    • Now We Are Six, online 2020
    • Isolation, Blanco Gallery, online 2020
    • Untitled, London UK 2019
    • Shadow Box, London UK 2018
    • Free the Voiceless, Somerset House London UK 2018

    Selected work

    • Sky Landscape Artist of the Year S8E1 participant (Blackpool) 2023
    • Awards Winner exhibition, Mall Galleries London UK 2022
    • Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, Mall Galleries London UK 2022
    • Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, Mall Galleries London UK 2021
    • Sky Portrait Artist of the Year S7E2 participant 2020
    • Royal Institute of painters in Watercolours, Mall Galleries, online 2020
    • Royal Society of Portrait Painters, Mall Galleries, online 2020
    • Auction House Rouillac, France 2020
    • Royal Institute of Oil painters, Mall Galleries London UK 2019
    • In The Studio group exhibition, Mall Galleries London UK 2019
    • Sky Portrait Artist of the Year S5E1 participant 2019
    • Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, Mall Galleries London UK 2019
    • Artist in Residence, Cass Art Islington 2019
    • Pebeo Mixed Media, The Strand gallery London UK 2018 and 2017

    Prizes

    • 2022 Leatherseller's Prize RI, Mall Galleries London UK (for Self-Portrait with two palettes)
    • 2020 Leatherseller's Prize RI, Mall Galleries London UK (for Suzy)
    • 2018 Finalist Holly Bush Emerging Woman Painter Prize, Burgh House London UK (for Evening thoughts)
    • 2018 Finalist Pebeo Mixed Media 2018, Menier gallery London UK (for Anaïta)

    Education

    • 2017-2020 Foundation Degree in Contemporary Portraiture, the Art Academy London UK
    • 2012-2014 Employment-oriented Technician qualification diploma in Video Editing and Post-Production, Lyon France
    • 2014-2015 University Degree in 3D Computer Graphics, Lyon France