Artist Statement

 As a multidisciplinary artist, my interests lie in mark making, using the gesture to create the dramatic & the visceral.  Regarding the female ‘nude’ it is one of context, social & political, regarding the identity and status of women, it is  historical and cultural, with a fascination rooted in the world of fashion.

As well as female life studies and abstract paintings, I make text based paintings, use photography, write and perform my own poetry. I don’t feel that this dilutes my focus, on the contrary, and in accordance to what’s available as a means of artistic expression, the parameters broaden every decade and art and artistic license encompasses a wider field of disciplines.  I see everything as a ‘work in progress’. In art as in life, nothing is ever completely finished, it’s just a stepping-stone to the next idea and the next project.

The reoccurring, or underlying, theme of my work seems to be at is simplest, one of abstracting the feminine and feminising the abstract.

News & Events.

SEE NEW WORK IN GALLERY

  • I am now a founder member of The Live Art Laboratory created by Annouchka Bayley, a platform for performance art and artists. Read more and see my profile and a film clip of me as Medea! www.liveartlaboratory.com
  • Please see comments for The Red Line below and on the testimonials page.
                           

'Last week something extraordinary happened in the shadowy crypt of a big Victorian church in North London.  Sooz Belnavis, artist and poet, performed her piece – The Red Line, before a small group of watchers, none of us quite knowing what was to come.  Through her lines, Sooz built a picture of womanhood, which, while not for a moment strident or aggressive, could not have been more powerful or more moving.  Sooz, beautiful, intelligent, meek, simply unpeeled the layers of wrapping, to uncover universal truths which are within a hand's reach, yet separated from us by a narrow but fathomless gulf. She touched us to the core with her words, delivered with quiet anguish, like a voice spanning generations, civilisations even.  We the listeners, found ourselves imbued with a new awareness at the end, something profound that had settled in our consciousness, that none of us had expected, but which, together in that dark crypt, we understood.'... Jo Sullam November 2011

 

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For more information email: sooz@soozbelnavis.co.uk