Biography

Susan Sensemann is an artist, educator, and arts administrator who has lived and worked in Chicago since 1979. She is a professor emerita in the School of Art and Design, University of Illinois at Chicago. Sensemann received her MFA in painting from Tyler School of Art, Temple University and a BFA in printmaking from Syracuse University Throughout her career, she has had many opportunities to exhibit work, teach, and lecture at art schools and universities abroad. She has lectured on contemporary women in the arts and the development of her work at institutions in China, South Korea, Italy, and Germany. She has been a visiting artist at numerous schools including the University of Notre Dame, West Virginia University and Bradley University where she also produced prints, the University of Iowa, Cranbrook Academy of Art, and Texas Women’s University among many others.

In 1997, she began an extensive body of photographic works that represent an investigation of a gothic narrative structure within a tradition of feminist self-portraiture. Recent installations combine poetry that she has based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short stories with her photography. As a painter, Sensemann has worked in oil, watercolor, and egg tempera in addition to all drawing media. For many years her work was focused on the structure and psychological implications depicted in works by Italian pre-Renaissance artists such as Duccio, Fra Angelico, and Piero della Francesca.

She has had work in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and museums throughout the United States including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Indianapolis Art Center; Roy Boyd Gallery in Chicago; the Ukrainian Museum and Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago; A.I.R., New York; Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta; Locus Gallery, St. Louis; the Art Institute of Boston. Works have been viewed internationally at Titanik Gallery, Turku, Finland; Gallery Woong, Seoul, S. Korea; The Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland; Jilin Province, Changchun, PR China; the Kunstmuseum, Torshazn, Faroe Islands, and ARCO 99, Madrid, Spain among others. Her paintings, drawings, and photographs are held in many private, university, and corporate collections throughout the country.

Curatorial endeavors have extended her research. Shows titled “Skew: the Unruly Grid,” “Heat,” “Libidinal,” “Touch,” “Brain/Body,” “Once Upon a Time and Now,” “More is More,” “Physiotasmagorical,” and “Obsessions” have featured works by well-established and emerging artists from Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles. She has written catalogue essays to accompany the exhibitions.