Sara Suppan (b. 1994) is an American painter living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has most recently exhibited at galleries including Yeah Maybe, The White Page, and Soo Visual Arts Center, and at NADA Miami with Friends Indeed Gallery, based in San Francisco. Suppan will have a solo exhibition with Friends Indeed Gallery in 2023, and a two-person exhibition at SENS Gallery in Hong Kong in early 2024. She will also participate in a residency at Moosey Gallery in Norwich, UK, in September 2023. Suppan was awarded a Creative Support for Individuals grant in 2021 and an Artist Initiative grant in 2017 from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Her paintings have been published in New American Paintings magazine and in Young Space online. In 2019, she completed a summer residency at Salzburger Kunstverein in Austria, and in 2017, she produced a solo exhibition at Yeah Maybe gallery titled You and I Do Not Form a Number. Suppan holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Sara Suppan thinks about each of her paintings as a little handwave, or a hello. The images are light and strange and sometimes sweet. They often include gestures of touch: a hand pinching a cat’s ear or dusting a leaf, two work gloves embracing, a hairclip lightly clasping fingers. The paintings depend on a contrast between their playful attitude and serious, labor-intensive rendering. The everyday is their overarching subject matter—the artist lives alone, and when she looks out into the world of her apartment, the hands in front of her are a part of that landscape, as are the things in it, and the interaction between them becomes a natural topic for the artwork.
Images: Sara Suppan's studio. Photo: Patrick Murphy. Sara Suppan in the studio. Photo: Patrick Murphy
