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Painting (MA)

Susanne Baumann

Side profile portrait of Susanne Baumann in front of her oil painting 'Absence'.
This oil painting on linen shows a green leather armchair where a empty, ghostlike jacket rests on the chair.

Medium:

Oil on linen

Size:

155 x 145 cm
absenceabsent-bodyarmchairclothesoil-on-linenpainting
The oil painting on linen shows a three-part mirror whose reflection is a chair with a fading shirt hanging.
The oil painting on linen shows a mirror whose reflection is a glimpse of a room - a leather sofa with an empty body-like jacket
Oil painting on canvas shows an interior scene with two armchairs on which a jacket and trousers sit ghostlily.
Oil painting on canvas shows an interior scene with trousers on an armchair.
Oil painting on canvas shows an interior scene with an armchair where an empty blue jacket sits.
A series of three small oil paintings shows a pair of gloves resting on different chairs.

Medium:

Oil on canvas

Size:

Each 20 x 20 cm
absent-bodychairsglovesmemoryoil-on-canvaspainting
Three oil paintings show the edge of a leather sofa and, next to it, a lamp-like figure in a shirt in three different postures.

The Triptych "Waiting" tells the story of how I perceive the progression of dementia. In the beginning, there is hope; after some time, you wonder, and then you realise it is lost. It's a cycle of waiting and grieving.

Medium:

Oil on canvas

Size:

Each 90 x 160 cm
absent-bodyclothesmemorysculptural-paintingtrenchcoat
Hardened shirt on canvas with a ghostly reflection of the artist in front of this sculptural painting.

Medium:

Sculptural painting - Shirt on canvas

Size:

80 x 110 cm
absent-bodyclothesmemorysculptural-painting
A hardened trenchcoat in an asymmetric wooden frame stands in the corner of a room, showing us his backside.

Leaving behind tracks of our lives inhabited with memories, stories and secret life. Casting a shadow of the past and creating the shadow of the future, which takes over the things we left behind.

Medium:

Sculptural painting - Wood and hardened used trench coat

Size:

85 x 100 cm
absent-bodyclothesmemorysculptural-paintingtrenchcoat

Susanne Baumann is a German-born, London-based artist. She has completed her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2023. She holds a Graduate Diploma in Art & Design from the Royal College of Art London, UK (2022); a BA in 'Culture and Management' from the University of Applied Sciences Zittau / Görlitz, Germany (2006); and a Master in 'Business Administration' from the University of Applied Sciences: Technology, Business and Design Wismar, Germany (2009).

After a decade of working in the field of project management for diverse engineering companies like STILL GmbH, aam IT GmbH and Repower Systems SE, she decided during COVID to follow her lifelong dream of being an artist and started in 2021 to focus on her artistic career. She has co-curated, organised, and participated in group exhibitions around London. Susanne's practice focuses on painting, drawing, and experimenting with clothing; with these mediums, she wants to create a narrative around her personal experience with the disease of dementia in her family.


Group Exhibitions:

2023   Inside Out, Core Arts Gallery, London, UK

2023   20x20 VISION, Citizens Art London Gallery - Blue House Yard, London, UK

2023   Third Floor Exhibition, Royal College of Art, London, UK

2022   Cast a Shadow, Safehouse 1&2, London, UK

Degree Details

School of Arts & HumanitiesPainting (MA)RCA2023 at Battersea and Kensington

RCA Battersea, Painting Building, First and second floors

Portrait of the artist Susanne Baumann in front of two of her oil paintings. In the foreground are a few unsharp brushes.

My practice spans from painting with oil and gouache to drawing and experimentation with used clothes. My work evolves and manifests around ideas of the human body, mental health, and emotions.

Feminist artists of the 1970s thought that the body was where nature and culture came together, where differences were reflected through biology and cultural perceptions, which made it an object of struggle. Due to my encounter with Stephan Perdekamp, theatre author, director, and creator of the Perdekamp Emotional Method (PEM), emotions and the human body have since played a significant role in my life, especially in how culture and society influence our behaviour and expression of emotions and the consequences of oppressed emotions.

In my current practice, I investigate my personal experience with dementia in my family. I dissect traces and fragments of a person who still exists but is not entirely there. Objects and clothes, as beholders of lived life, are so replete with shape, actions and meaning of one's life that they invoke inherent memories which speak so forcefully.

My inspiration derives from my current environment, home, my daily walks or visits to my parents' house. These places sometimes retain glimpses of these moments you coincidentally came by, and they are speaking inherent of this longing and memory, and other times I actively stage these moments to create a certain feeling. My objective is to play with these used clothes. They could be mine, my parents' or friends' clothes, random clothes from a charity shop, or even found on the street. I try to dissect, deconstruct, and vanish this former shell of a person in pursuit of catching this melancholic feeling which is a permanent companion of mine while living with a loved one who has dementia.

I like to create a dimensional illusion with my paintings 'emotional and spatial' to transfer the viewer to a feeling and experience they can relate to. In pursuit of being strong, showing your real feelings is often not easy; that's why I want to find a way to visualise in my work the inner motion, conflict and torment of human beings that are not immediately visible.

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Royal College of Art

Registered Office: Royal College of Art,
Kensington Gore, South Kensington,
London SW7 2EU