Suzy Spence is a contemporary American painter living and working between New York City, Vermont and coastal Maine. Spence occupies a singular space within the medium of painting; her constructed portraits and fictitious worlds draw on hunting traditions from British sporting art, time-based drips and gestures associated with the New York School, and canonical references ranging from Francisco Goya to Paula Rego. Her recent research into the physical properties of oil paint, after decades of working exclusively in water-based mediums, has opened a new chromatic field. 

Spence’s work was first presented by legendary gallerist Colin DeLand at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles in 1997. The following year, DeLand gave her a solo exhibition of her hunts scenes and portraits at his gallery, American Fine Arts, Co., on Wooster Street in New York. Her most recent exhibitions include Sears Peyton New York (2026), Maya Frodeman Gallery (2025) , Jackson, WY; The Frame presented by collector Oleg Guerrand-Hermès, New York City (2024); Wave Pattern, curated by Dylan Brant and Max Werner, New York City (2023); Sara’s, New York City (2023); Arusha Gallery, Somerset, England (2023); Hurst Contemporary, London, England (2023); Cathouse Proper, Brooklyn New York (2019).

Spence completed her undergraduate degree at Parsons School of Design in New York and received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts. She attended residencies at Skowhegan (Maine) and the Vermont Studio Center. Reviews have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Paper Magazine, Frieze, Artnet, Artcritical, Two Coats of Paint, The Brooklyn Rail, The Portland Press Herald, Art New England and other publications.

Spence’s work is in private and public collections, including New York Foundation for the Arts; MHKA Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Belgium; the Grazer Kunstverein, Graz Austria; Glarner Kunstverein, Glarus, Switzerland; The Zillman Museum at The University of Maine; The New England Museum of Contemporary Art (NNEMoCA), and the archives of Colin De Land’s American Fine Arts Co., held at The Smithsonian Archives of American Art and Bard College Library, in addition to numerous private collections.