Susanna
Cooney

My practice explores the space between sculpture, painting, and moving image. I create bas-relief works using polymer clay, plaster, and paint, transforming everyday materials into tactile surfaces that blur the boundary between two and three dimensions.

Alongside these physical works, I create stop-motion animations using the same handmade materials and forms. The sculptures become performers, shifting, evolving, and taking on new lives through movement. Together, the static and animated works invite viewers to consider time, transformation, and the relationship between object and image.

Scale is an important part of how the work is experienced. Many pieces are large enough to confront the body directly, extending several feet across the wall and holding hundreds of individually formed elements. Their size allows them to function simultaneously as broad visual fields and as accumulations of intimate details. Viewers can first encounter the work as a whole, then move closer to discover smaller narratives, textures and symbols embedded within it.

Representation and metaphor are central to my practice. Rather than presenting fixed narratives, I use symbolic imagery and layered visual language to create works that resist singular interpretation. I am interested in the space where meaning is formed between the artwork and the viewer, believing that the conclusions people draw often reveal as much about their own experiences, assumptions, and values as they do about the work itself.

Many of my works engage with themes of social justice, inviting reflection on the structures, inequalities, and shared human experiences that shape contemporary life. Rather than prescribing answers, I seek to create space for questioning, dialogue, and multiple perspectives.

After developing my artistic practice in New York, I stepped away from exhibiting to focus on raising my family. Returning to my work has become an act of rediscovery. My practice is informed by both that interruption and the renewed perspective it has brought, embracing patience, play, and careful craftsmanship.

Through texture, shadow, movement, symbolism and scale, I aim to create works that reward close looking and invite sustained engagement—encouraging viewers to question where sculpture ends, painting begins, animation bridges the two, and ultimately, where the artwork ends and their own interpretation begins.