The ECH is deeply saddened to learn of the death of Susanna Heller

Susanna Heller (1956-2021)

On Oct 13, 2020, Susanna Heller  wrote to ECH editor Tariq Hassan Gordon:

Hey Tariq it’s Susanna reaching out to you! Wyn shared your email and told me you were setting up the embassy cultural house website. Feel free to use my entire website or any part of it. It is simply SusannaHeller.com
Also if you need any other info just ask. I’m so pleased it’s YOU who is doing this! Damn I wish we could meet in person with your mom and dad too of course! For now I’m just sending a giant hug and kiss and all my love.
Susanna

The Paris Vision ECH tabloid issue Sept./Oct./ Nov. 1984, page 6, Susanna Heller in conversation with Jamelie Hassan...

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The Embassy Cultural House is deeply saddened to learn of the death of the remarkable painter Susanna Heller, who passed away on May 5, 2021.

Many of Susanna’s paintings involved elaborate installations made up of assemblages of smaller paintings on paper and were based on her walks around the city.  Her love of painting and her love of walking were intricately connected. Her sketch books were the notes that reflected her curiosity and intense observation of her surroundings, whether walking around the metropolis of NYC or the cities of Europe.

ECH co-founder Jamelie Hassan first met Susanna in 1984 when they were both living at La Cité internationale des arts in Paris through the Canada Council for the Arts. Jamelie remembers her time with Susanna:

"Over the months that we overlapped, we enjoyed many conversations about culture and numerous wanderings around the city, so conscious of the way the city and its abundant museums and galleries, parks and gardens, kept us outside walking, rather than working inside our respective studios.

"Our group in Paris at the time included my young son Tariq, age 11, Ron Benner, Wyn Geleynse and his daughter Mara, age 11. The Paris Vision ECH tabloid issue from Sept./Oct./ Nov. 1984 records this unusal collection of creative people in dialogue with Susanna over that period.  In 1986, Susanna came to London to present a solo exhibition of her recent works at the Embassy Cultural House. Her connections with the London community of artists, writers and curators deepened at that time.

"Recently, in October 2020, she reconnected with us and the ECH, presenting one of her startling paintings, Eyes in a Bleak World, 2020 for the open call online exhibition Hiding in Plain Sight coordinated by Ron Benner. In her communications to us she expressed her pleasure to be involved with our reinvigorated collective.

Susanna was an inspiring artist, a generous colleague, and a warm and supportive friend. Her death leaves an enormous gap in the arts community both in Canada and the United States, where she had made her home and studio in Brooklyn, NYC."
 
Here is a revealing conversation from Feb. 6, 2020 with her longtime friend Medrie MacPhee that conveys the genuine spirit, humour, intelligence and beauty of our friend and artist Susanna. May she rest in peace. Her website is  online here.

October 15, 2020, photo from Susanna Heller, "Tonight’s sunset over the East river looking at manhattan !! Xoxo susanna"

Susanna Heller, "Eyes in a Bleak World", 2020, oil paint, mixed media on canvas

Artist Statement for the work by Susanna Heller "Eyes in a Bleak World" for the ECH's inaugural online exhibit Hiding in Plain Sight launched on October 30, 2020: “Eyes in a Bleak World “ is a recent painting completed in 2020.  The sky and earth in this oil painting are dominated by the intensity of two eyeballs wrenched from some creature and which soar comet-like through a scorched and haunted landscape. The power of sight in this painting is menacing and speaks to the destructive state of the world which we are witnessing.

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