Susan Arena holds a BA from Harvard University and an MFA from Yale School of Art. She also studied drawing and painting at the New York Studio School. Recent awards include the Mercedes Matter Award at the New York Studio School. Recent exhibitions include “Apologizing For My Wild” at Glendale Arts Center, (Los Angeles) “Goddesses and Monsters” at Ladies Room (Los Angeles), “Lateral Expansion” at Formah (New York City) and “We Are Here/Here We Are” at Durden and Ray (Los Angeles.) She has had solo shows at Gallery 825 (LA), Space Gallery (Pasadena), and Indie Collective (LA). Her work has been exhibited in galleries including The Art Room (LA), the Center for Contemporary Art (Santa Fe), West Hollywood Arts Center (Los Angeles), Tinlark Gallery (LA), Fresh Start (LA), DUMBO Arts Center (NYC) and D’Amelio Terras (NYC). Arena has been a resident at Vermont Studio Center and Castle Hill Center for the Arts and awarded the Alice Kimball English Travelling Award to study tribal paintings in village India and the George P. Gardner Travelling Fellowship to study Islamic calligraphy in Cairo, Egypt. Susan Arena is a lifetime educator who has taught at Yale School of Art, Brandeis University, NYU, Pratt School of Art and Design, and Santa Monica College. She is former Head of the Art Department at Crossroads Elementary School and now teaches there.

Motherhood is joyful and monstrous; sexuality is freeing and shaming. The characters in my paintings bring into question how the female body holds a new kind of power as seen through the modern gaze–mother, monster, adventurer, sex goddess–a multitude of signifiers, held in a single vessel. Concepts of feminism are essential but limiting. I want my work to evoke the beautiful messiness of being female and to reckon with how the art and the objects we create make us human. Through a contemporary lens, I employ images of the female goddess made by ancient Egyptians, Greeks, Etruscans and Mesopotamians. The goddess feels timeless like the earth mother. But like earth, it’s spinning and changing all the time. For me the goddess represents the power of the human life force, of eternal consciousness, of the muse, and a connection to the ultimate power of creation. As a society, we neglect the goddess at our peril.

Exhibition:

Mythology/Matriarchy