Sussi Louise Smith
Although now living in Yorkshire, for Danish artist Sussi Louise, Scandinavia forms the foundation of her inspiration. Her paintings draw heavily on its traditions, cultures and contemporary visions of life, love, peoples and places. Coming from a country comprising more than 400 islands sitting, in many cases, just a few feet above the waves of the North and Baltic seas, water of the salty variety is a major influence on her work. It is not only the sea’s call or the threat of its rising wrath.
Threaded through her work are the sagas of the Scandinavian peoples. Their resilience like Yggdrasil rises from the depths, and their triumphs, hard-won and often against the fates, carry both the weight of myth and the lightness of endless summer nights. Scandinavia is often invoked by those who believe it comprises a set of northern countries that are sorted, sensible and seemingly happy. There is more than a grain of truth in this interpretation. But like so many fables there is more to it than that. Histories and occupations, minimalist design, hygge and social openness are stories so often told, but Scandinavia is far more complex and ill-at-ease with itself than many believe it to be. In many ways, it is the more Scandi-noir because of the Scandi-light. These sagas and myths of her homelands infuse Sussi’s paintings (and also her poetry). They unfold in harmony with the land and sea - fjords carved by ancient ice, forests murmuring with tales of old gods.
All Sussi’s artworks are stories anchored in both respect for and playfulness in Scandinavian cultures. Artistic style Sussi’s artwork is deliberately naïvistic: paintings encompassing different media on paper, boards, wood and rocks. Care and attention to detail is her leitmotif, each composition designed to capture, sometimes in microscopic everyday detail, personal stories and journeys to enlightenment.
Although Sussi’s art is often found under the hashtag SussisHappyArtProject her artistic interpretations do not shrink from addressing the contrasts between light and darkness, the magic and the mythical. Hence, understandings of the competing tensions between global and local, identity and history, fear and pain or being imperfectly perfect are among the deeper themes to be discerned in Sussi’s vision of life. Naïve certainly, but colourful and complex as well.
Artistic training Sussi grew up in an artistic family and attended art classes and courses with her mother from the tender age of three. Despite her persistent enthusiasm for the arts since then, she decided not to pursue painting as her main career. For many years, Sussi worked at Roskilde University located near Copenhagen. This is a University with a distinctive tradition of project-based pedagogy, student-led learning and research, which is very different from Denmark’s older universities. Sussi’s role in staff development, was to research and apply knowledge about how to teach University educators to be better learners as well as teachers, and to this end, she often used art and her creative influences as part of the curriculum. To her – art IS learning.
Alongside her part-time academic career, Sussi continued to develop her own personal brand and style. Drawn to naïvistic methods of expression, her work gained a growing reputation in Denmark for its power to both illustrate and ‘illuminate’ stories and was displayed by several organisations in Denmark from the early 1990s. However, when she became disabled in 1998, she decided to focus her attention on an Action for Happiness approach to sharing her artworks.
She started to mainly accept micro-exhibitions in public places like hospitals, pain clinics, dentists, hospices, etc. Spaces where colours and storytelling would bring much-needed joy. Selected exhibitions and collaborations include: The Grove Bookshop, Ilkley York Art Galleries, 2018 Ilkley Library Exhibitions Ilkley Dental Care Manuel medicinsk Klinik, Lumsås, DK Tine Tetzschner klinik, CPH, DK Lægerne i Kirkestræde, Holbæk, DK Galleri Livsmaleri open day art workshops 2023, 2024 Arts Council funded workshop with Carmen Marcus – Art and the uses of colour, Newcastle 2025 Braiding Colours, Senses & Poetry - Creative Observatory workshop for LGBT Youth Scotland, Galashiels 2025