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Overview

Mariposa Gallery announces a solo exhibition of Albuquerque-based artist Suzanne Sbarge, March 7 – April

30, 2025, with an opening reception on Friday, March 7, 5-8pm.

Suzanne Sbarge has had an art prac4ce all her adult life and has shown with galleries across the country,

maintaining a professional career as a visual ar4st while she was simultaneously leading nonprofit arts

organiza4ons for the past 30 years. This exhibition features new work created since she stepped down from

her museum director role in October 2023. She says, “Making art has always been central to me. I have a

deep reverence for the imagination and the place of dreams where the conscious mind is not in charge.”

This group of paintings brings together collage-based, narrative works created in Oaxaca, Mexico, along with

experiments in abstraction done in her Albuquerque studio. Themes include water scarcity, animal dreams, and

the interconnection of humans and nature. She combines living, extinct, and/or imagined fauna and flora with

humans to create whimsical and haunting hybrid creatures. She says, “Each piece is meant to provide an open-

ended story with which viewers can connect in their own personal ways. The figures gaze at the viewer and one

another from within their abstracted worlds, as if to challenge reality, nature, and perception.”

Vessel imagery is prominent in many of the works on view. Sbarge says, “I see the vessel as a container of the

psyche or subconscious mind, where thoughts, memories, and emotions are stored and processed. Vessels

preserve what’s inside.”

Sbarge’s work is often described as Surrealist, and she doesn’t deny that the term fits. She has been most

influenced by women surrealists, particularly those who have lived and worked in Mexico such as Leonora

Carrington and Remedios Varo. In her paintings, she seeks out balance between the dualities of familiarity and

otherworldliness, interior and exterior, domesticity and freedom, sky and earth, and real and imagined.

In addition to painting, Sbarge’s creative practice includes leading an annual artist residency in Oaxaca,

Mexico; graphic design specializing in catalogs for artists, galleries, and museums; hosting a monthly collage

group; and pursuing mutual support with like-minded artists.

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Image on page 1:

Suzanne Sbarge, Water Catcher, 2024, mixed media on panel, 18 x 18 inches

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