Description
‘Secret Suzie’ by Silas
Artist: Silas
Title: ‘Secret Suzie’
Medium: Mixed techniques on canvas: oil paint, acrylic paint, eaastindian ink, graphite, paper collage, spray paint
Dimensions: 19.7″ x 15.7″
Framing: Unframed
About the Artwork:
“Before I started painting Suzie, I made a sketch in Photoshop using facial parts from different models to come up with a brand new portrait of a fictional character. I have different folders on my computer with all sorts of clothes, like a wardrobe, so I can choose the perfect outfit for each new personage I create. As a basis I first made a collage of various art papers and soon after this Suzie was born, the mysterious girl you can’t get out of your mind, the girl you write a song about.” – Silas
About the Artist:
(Artist Bio)
Silas Schletterer was born and raised in Middelburg, The Netherlands. At the age of 19 he moved to Rotterdam to study Illustration at the Willem de Kooning academy of art, from which he graduated in 2000. After a couple of years of working as an illustrator, he decided to follow his heart and started focusing on his autonomous work. Today he makes a living as a contemporary artist.
Inspired by films and fashion photography, he chooses young women and men to star in his work. The paintings he makes tell a story. The composition of his paintings often tends to be cinematographic, where nature claims a central role. The relationship between human and animal, the search for a long lost soulmate and a desolated habitat are recurring subjects in his work. However, Silas’ work simultaneously engages with you as a totality and as a multiplicity, telling you one particular story in a particular way, whilst at the same time, silently asking you to consider an increasing number of other stories and questions. The same goes for the series of portraits Silas produces, portraits that make you question the story, the sentiment that lies behind the facial expression of the personage.
The characters he paints are fictional. By combining facial parts of different models and recomposing them into a new model Silas creates portraits of distinct personages. Although his work can be recognized by the boldness of his colour palette and by that certain way of characteristic painted key players, Silas keeps experimenting with this classic theme, using mixed techniques to construct the layering,
Silas was a member of Dutch art collective Antistrot (1997 -2010). This renowned group of artists did shows all over the world (Tokyo, Miami, Dublin,..) including two solo exhibitions in New York and San Francisco. Currently Silas is one of the 6 members of the art collective KAMP HORST, established after the demise of its predecessor Antistrot. The main focus of its six members lies on making group paintings on both canvases and walls, but illustration and design also make up a big part of KAMP HORST’s body of work.