Sue Burickson is a conceptual new media sculptor/video artist . Born in Brooklyn . she attended college at Radcliffe, UCLA and UC/Berkeley. She studied with Paul Reynard, a pupil of Fernand Leger, for 10 years and also at the Art Students League, SVA, Manhattan Graphics and the National Academy. Her studio is in Brooklyn.
Initially, she worked as a portrait painter of Civil War Reenactors. Frustrated by the inability to adequately portray their inner landscape using a 2 dimensional medium and inspired by Bill Viola’s “The Crossing”, she turned to sculpture with embedded videos. Transmedia Portraits was born.
In 2010, she discovered Ron Mueck’s work at the Brooklyn museum and understood the effect of scale on the viewer. She began a series of life size Centaur sculptures with videos in the chest and the head called “The Inner Life of Centaurs”. The Centaur was chosen to symbolize the two natures of man. The body of the Centaur is covered with gold seashells to represent the outer persona. The gold shells tarnish over time. The “Inner Life of Centaurs” explores the relationship between the body, mind and feelings in man.
In 2012, she followed the work of Michelangelo Pistoletto’s mirror paintings which demonstrated the value of engaging the viewer more directly. Currently, she is investigating new interactive technologies for her installations.
Throughout her career, she has drawn inspiration from, Gurdjieff, Christian mysticism, Zen Buddhism and Sufism.