Deva Suckerman

The perfect day for me is a day in my studio. The time I spend there is never wasted. It's a space where I feel the most fulfilled and the most true to myself.

I am fascinated with collecting and creating from found materials. When I start a painting, I’m often inspired by the texture of the wood, the grain, nail holes, burn marks, weathering, the most unique qualities of what I’m working with. Giving new life to discarded objects and finding the beauty in what is broken is an inspiring process.

While the material is often the starting point, it becomes about finding a sense of unity between material and image, a space where imperfections, scars, beauty and darkness can all coexist. Combining the warmth of distressed wood canvases with elusive and radiant figures creates an unlikely duality. The mood is peaceful and haunting, perfect and flawed.

A lot of people ask me who my women are. They’re not specific people as much as they are representations of thoughts, feelings, ideas and experiences. So many stories go through my mind as I work- she feels safe, she tries to let go, she emerges from a storm, she wants to be at peace, she descends under the weight, she pushes and pulls- internal battles that are familiar to all o...

Deva has been involved in the Chicago arts community since she moved from her hometown of Minneapolis in 1997. In addition to exhibiting regularly, Deva has worked with ARC Gallery and Educational Foundation and the City of Chicago as a CAAP grant visual arts panelist, a featured artist for Chicago Artists Month and the featured cover artist for the City of Chicago’s National Women’s History Month Calendar. Her work has received reviews in TimeOut Chicago, Critic’s Choice in the Chicago Reader, and three curator’s choice awards from the Around the Coyote Arts Organization. Deva was also a featured artist in Studio Visit Magazine, the sister publication to New American Paintings. One of her favorite projects was PartsUnknown Gallery, an alternative exhibition space in Pilsen, where she focused on promoting work by her favorite local artists. Deva currently balances her art life with her life as a licensed counselor and art therapist working with children and youth in foster care. She runs her studio out of the Bloomingdale Arts Building where she enjoys rummaging through piles of found wood, building canvases from her finds, and seeing where the process takes her.