A painter for over twenty years, Suzanne has moved from mixed media to photo based work and, most recently, to digital film and installation. Her work explores themes of boundaries and connections, prying at the space between things, between moments and events, people and places and various states of being.

This interest has manifested in her move toward interdisciplinary collaboration where she mines the rich space between artists and between genres. An ongoing collaboration with Toronto poet/educator Rishma Dunlop began with The 2002 exhibition “The Body of My Garden”, wherein Northcott responded to Dunlop's poetry collection of the same name. The two continue their aesthetic inquiry and have published extensively together. The move toward video has given Northcott access to time and to sound in her work while incorporating both the poetry and the visual art.

Northcott’s work is collected and published internationally and she is in demand as a teacher and lecturer across Canada. Influences include Betty Goodwin, Gerhard Richter and Barnett Newman.


Writing from Suzanne Northcott's Surrey Art Gallery Exhibition "Crows":


Crows are one of nature's smartest creatures. They have learned to open zippers and steal food from golf bags, bend wire into tools, and use cars to crack nuts. We marvel at their cleverness, adapting to the city without becoming tame. Every night their wildness finds them swarming the skies in an ancient ritual.

Langley-based artist, Suzanne Northcott is fascinated by the behaviour of crows. To her, they represent an 'awesome otherness', especially every evening when 16,000 Northwestern Crows migrate from their Vancouver scavenging territories, crossing Boundary Road to a communal roost in Burnaby. Observing them, Northcott saw metaphors in their behaviours on the nature of boundaries and connections, the space between day and night, city and suburb, between the mundane and the mythic, and the tensions between. Northcott also explores the parallels between the crows' eastward pilgrimage in unruly black ribbons and the highway parade of commuting workers in their cars in her panoramic video installation.

Northcott's video installation creates an environment that echoes the mystery of this nightly flight, and invites visitors to see the wild just under the familiar face of the city. The gathering is gothic - crows throng the rooftops of car dealerships and crowd every telephone wire, jostling and calling as they wait to enter their roost in an alder wood grove. By dark they have all found their way into the roost and the cacophony of the gathering dies slowly to an impenetrable canopy of silence.

The video installation is accompanied by biological studies, drawings and plans that led up to, and informed, the final artwork. Visitors will be invited to share their own story about crows.

The video production crew included cinematographer Rudy Kovanic, video editor and post-production coordinator Laurie Long, and sound designer Jean Routier. Other advisors and contributors include poet, Rishma Dunlop and biologist, Rob Butler of the National Wildlife Service.


Artist Resume - Suzanne Northcott  

Publications

2001 International Artists Magazine, 'Masters Gallery'
1997 Holiday Maker Magazine, 'Italy - An Artist's Tuscany'


Selected Commissions

2000 Mural, Langley Memorial Hospital, Langley, BC
1997 Mural, Royal Vancouver Yacht Club, Vancouver, BC
1996 Mural, Ristorante Rendesvous, Florence, Italy


Selected Solo Exhibitions
2005 "Elements" LindaLando Fine Art, Vancouver, BC
2004 "new work" LindaLando Fine Art, Vancouver, BC
2003 "Crowworks" LindaLando Fine Art, Vancouver, BC
2002 "Holding Space" LindaLando Fine Art, Vancouver, BC
2001 "Falling, Fallen" LindaLando Fine Art, Vancouver, BC
2000 "Broken Beauty" Gallery 1248, Victoria, BC
1999 "Tuscany" The Fort Gallery, Fort Langley, BC
1996 "Stone Passages" Birthplace of B.C. Gallery, Fort Langley, BC
1994 "Toward the Light" University College of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford, BC

Selected Group & Curated Exhibitions
2006 "Motherload" LindaLando Fine Art, Vancouver, BC (Two Person Show)
2005 "Nature/Nurture" LindaLando Fine Art, Vancouver, BC (Four Person Show)
2000 "Tuscany" The Fort Gallery, Fort Langley, BC
1998 "The Sex Lives of Vegetables" Harrison Festival of the Arts, Harrison, BC
1996 "Sexuality Show" Havana Gallery, Vancouver, BC
1995 "Blue Shift" Internet Visual Poem, Kamloops, BC


Selected Juried Exhibitions

2000 "AIM for Art" International Exhibition, hosted by the Federation of Canadian Artists, Vancouver, BC
1999 "artWORK'99" Provincial Exhibit, Victoria BC
1997 "Triptych" Federation Gallery, Vancouver, BC
1997 "artWORK'97" Provincial Exhibit, Powell River, BC
1993 "Images and Objects" Provincial Exhibit, Trail, BC