The works of painter and sculptor Susan Kopp are created through an intensive, handcrafted process – she works, shapes, and refines them until they are tangible and thus perfected.
Susan Kopp was born in Zurich in 1964 and lives and works in Wigoltingen, Thurgau. After studying law at the University of Zurich, Susan Kopp was a successful lawyer from 1994. Since 2013, she has been a freelance and equally successful painter and sculptor. The transition from paragraphs, files, disputes, and Lady Justice to stone, bronze, canvas, and Athena might seem surprising and stark. Appearances are deceiving. Susan Kopp describes her artistic activity with the words: «I hew, grind, rasp, brush, model until the work becomes tangible – then it is complete.»
This aligns conceptually with her legal work. Because legal problems also need to be considered from all angles and thoroughly explored with various methods until they are graspable, so that the solution is perfectly achieved. Both fields involve an intellectual engagement. The demands for precision are also the same. There is, however, one difference: As an artist, Susan Kopp transforms reality in terms of color, poetry, and proportions, to the point of subtle reinterpretation. The depictions acquire a smile. The viewer smiles back, cheerfully delighted. And there's another difference: The legal endeavor, bound by objectivity, finds artistic liberation in a wonderfully subjective and boundless imagination. Susan Kopp enthusiastically exercises this artistic freedom.
She is regularly invited to gallery exhibitions, teaches at the Frauenfeld Art School, received a research grant from the Canton of Thurgau, won first prize at the Symposium International de Sculpture in Morges VD, and was represented at BadRagARTz 2018 with the large sculpture «Sündarella», created together with Brigitte Schneider, which was purchased by the City of Frauenfeld and placed in front of the cantonal government building. Two of her works were acquired by the Nostra Vita Sculpture Park in the Tuscan municipality of Montalcino.
Text: Alex Bänninger, Cultural Publicist
Photo: Francis Dercourt
