What Pulls Us Together Or Keeps Us Apart

Georgia Suter Explores The Human Condition

In a world of uncertainty, the work of painter Georgia Suter is especially timely, exploring themes of human relationships: connection and disconnection. Well respected Hamptons artist and curator Paton Miller calls her, “a refreshing young artist, bold in her compositions.” 

Suter’s work portrays two individuals in a setting which can indicate their connection such as a duo playing tennis but then also their disconnection, a competition with a net in between them. Suter comments, “I like to paint figures as silhouettes to take away their personal characteristics. The painting becomes more about the relational dynamic, what it feels like to be alone or together, to be part of a community or an individual.” 

Growing up, Suter’s family moved around quite often so these themes are very familiar to her. Both her parents are artists, her mother a painter and her father at the time was a political illustrator for The New York Times and Washington Post. She recalls, “My dad was always drawing, at the kitchen table and dining room. He would take us to diners and draw on napkins.”

This freedom of work allowed her family to move around the East Coast. “We didn’t have to live anywhere, and my parents wanted to give us different perspectives,” she said of the experience, “It was a lot of transience, but it made me independent.” This gave Suter first-hand knowledge of being an outsider and questioning how to create roots when you don’t have history or finding belonging in a community where you are new. 

“In college I majored in journalism and minored in studio art,” she says, “Then after graduation I took classes at the Art Students League in New York City. With words there are limits, but with color there are infinite modes of expression. I like how painting brings me out of my head into the external world.”

Suter’s work is designed to allow interpretation since you do not see a happy or unhappy expression on her subjects’ faces. One painting depicts a long table with a diner at each end and multiple candles in between. She explains, “It’s funny how some people say, ‘Oh wow it looks like an awkward first date,’ while others think it could be a harmonious and silent dinner between two people who know each other so well they don’t even need to speak.”

In terms of connecting, one of Suter’s favorite places from her moves was Amagansett. “Growing up here in Amagansett and being able to wander the woods was the peak of my existence. Having had a childhood out here drew me back for the freedom and connection to nature.” She now enjoys a home in Sag Harbor with a former chicken coop as a studio. “In my apartment in Brooklyn working with oil paint felt toxic,” she recounts, “Out here I have outside and a breeze.” This creates freedom to use oil paint, her favorite medium. “I think it really glows. Oil paint has a richness in its colors and is almost beaming off the canvas.”

And in the search to make her own community, Suter has found a group of young artists in the Hamptons. “It doesn’t feel competitive,” she explains, “It feels like we support each other and are friends, going to each other’s shows and looking out for each other. There’s a real fluidity out here that is different in the city.” 

So, for now the wanderer has put down her roots, and growing up from them is a beautiful bloom of new artistic work.