Susan Nelson (she/human) is a Canadian multi-media visual artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland), Aotearoa (New Zealand). Her art practice explores the inter-worlds of materiality, psychology, and relational pluralities.

She is passionate about championing an authentic creative process as a means of revealing the unconscious through playful manipulation of a wide range of materials spanning a gamut of bronze, plasticine, hair, wax, clay, yarn, paper, and hard candy – then pushing things around between 3D and 2D realms.

“As a maker, I live for the alchemy of odd pairings: seeing and feeling the way materials speak to us and to each other in various configurations. Especially when charged with deeper questions.” – S. Nelson

Her worldview is aligned with authors such as Maya Angelou, Yuval Noah Harari, Naomi Klein, Chief Dan George, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and Carl Jung. And she is inspired by artists such as Louise Nevelson, Tim Hawkinson, Ann Hamilton, Cat Fooks, Cy Twombly, Liet Herigan, Ai Wei Wei, Julia Morrison, Peter Volkous, Viktor Willing and Brian Jungen. Exploring relationships to self/collective, conscious/ unconscious, nature’s systems, and human history is in the background of everything she creates.

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Her arts training includes early faux finishing studies at the Valerie Skemp Decorative Arts Studio (Canada), various extensive specialty fine arts workshops at The Vancouver Academy of Art, a Creative Studies Certificate from The Otago Polytechnic School of Art (Dunedin), a Masters in Arts Management (1st Class Hons) at Whitecliffe College of Art and Design (Auckland), and most recently a Postgrad Diploma in Fine Arts at Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland.

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Contact via enquiry form below.