Susanne Leutenegger is a painter of Swiss origin. After settling in Ireland, she graduated in 1987 with a degree in visual arts at Cork’s Crawford College of Art and Design. It followed a long period of peregrination during which she lived in England, Switzerland, Italy and Germany, developing her work and influences. She eventually returned to Cork in 1994 and established her studio at the Backwater Artists Group in 2004.
Susanne’s work is deeply organic and lies between figuration and abstraction. Everything is inspiring to her. Her sketchbook is a kind of eclectic set of words or sentences that appeal to her, decorative motifs both floral and architectural, which she uses as scources of inspiration. A very sensitive person, the artist absorbs all that surrounds her to express its essence during an unconscious creative process.
Strongly marked by Betty Edwards’ well-known book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” (1979), Susanne tries to free herself from all conscious and reassuring thoughts, controlled by the left hemisphere of her brain so to allow its right hemisphere, the seat of abstract, intuitive, and pictorial thought, to express itself in all it’s liberty, without restriction, in a language exceeding numbers, letters or words. She then creates works with bright colours and instinctive forms, charged with energy.
The artist, who also practices and teaches the Feldenkrais method – a method of somatic education that aims at self-awareness through the movement and the re-appropriation of the body – places movement at the center of her work. It is for her the very essence of life. Thus, it is with some sinuous curves, associated with quick and immediate gestures, that she represents in her paintings, the substance of things.
Susanne Leutenegger has now exhibited all over the world, in Switzerland, in Germany (Cologne, Berlin), and of course in Ireland, in Dublin, and in the County of Cork (Glucksman Gallery, Crawford Gallery, Sirius Center Cobh, Fenton Gallery, Form Gallery, Lavit Gallery).
Rachel Chenu – 2019 (Article in French on Pausart.fr)