Suzanne McClelland (b. 1959) is an American painter based in New York, who studied at the University of Michigan and the School of Visual Arts. She took part in the Whitney Biennial in 1993 and 2014, received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2019, and her work is in more than 30 public collections, including MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her abstract paintings are grounded in language, speech and sound, turning words and fragments of text into gestural marks.
Suzanne McClelland (b. 1959, Jacksonville, Florida, USA) is an American painter based in New York. She received a BFA from the University of Michigan in 1981 and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1989. Among her teachers were Judy Pfaff and Ursula von Rydingsvard, who influenced her move towards mixed media and a conceptual approach. McClelland makes abstract work grounded in language, speech and sound, in which words and fragments of text become gestural marks on the surface. She took part in the Whitney Biennial in 1993 and again in 2014. Her work is held in more than 30 public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Walker Art Center. In 2019 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. She teaches in the Fine Arts MFA programme of the School of Visual Arts. The painting “They” (1993), in acrylic and pen on canvas with resin and offered by TUMO Gallery, dates from the year of her first Whitney Biennial and shows her characteristic use of a single word as the subject of an abstract composition.
