Don Suggs

Don Suggs in his Los Angeles studio, February 2007

Don Suggs is an American artist (born March 16, 1945) based in Los Angeles, California. Described as polymorphic and stylistically variable,^[1] his oeuvre includes paintings, drawings, photographs, and sculptures and is recognized for its use of color.

Biography

Don Suggs was born in Fort Worth, Texas and grew up in San Diego. He received a B.A. in 1969 from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), having studied psychology, film, and art. He received both an M.A. in 1971 and an M.F.A. in 1972 from UCLA.

Suggs taught drawing, painting, sculpture and color theory from 1972-1984 at Florida State University at Tallahassee, Franconia College in New Hampshire, University of Southern California, and Otis Art Institute. Since 1983 he has been teaching painting and drawing at UCLA. Over the years, he has been co-editor with Paul Vangelisti of several non-profit art and literature publications: Boxcar, Forehead, and Ribot. He has published four art and poetry books, collaborating with Paul Vangelisti and Martha Ronk.

Suggs currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

Suggs' work

During his career, Suggs has worked in three- to five-year periods on a particular idea and with specific media. He has followed his varied aesthetic interests in a methodical way and is thus portrayed as an artist’s artist.^[2] Illustrating the continuity of a rigorous aesthetic investigation,^[3] Suggs’ major bodies of work include Passions, Autochthonous Views, Proprietary Views, Portraits, Old Genres, Heuristic Paintings, Tondototems, Paint Ons and Feastpoles. Renowned for his painting, Suggs’ practice in this medium is said to range from geometric abstraction to abstract expressionism to conceptualism to photorealism to pop art.^[4]

Suggs has been showing with LA Louver gallery in Venice, California since 1977.

Awards

Suggs has been awarded two National Endowment for the Arts Grants (1973 and 1991).

Exhibitions

Since 1970, Suggs’ works have been included in dozens of group exhibitions across the United States. He has been reviewed in numerous publications including Artforum, Art in America, Artweek, Frieze, LACMA publications, Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Modern Painters, and Smithsonian magazine. Don Suggs’ solo exhibitions include:

2007

Don Suggs: Concentric, LA Louver, Venice, CA Exhibition page

2007

Don Suggs: One Man Group Show, curated by Meg Linton at the Ben Maltz Gallery, Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA Exhibition page

2005

Don Suggs, Ben Maltz Gallery at Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA (traveling)

2004

Pacifiers and Tondo Studies, Peter Blake Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA

Paintings and Feastpoles, College of Creative Studies, UCSB, Santa Barbara, CA

Compound Photographs, Thomas McCormick Gallery, Chicago, IL

1997

Hexane Photographs, LA Louver, Venice, CA

1993

Old Genres - Photoworks, LA Louver, Venice, CA

1989

Clearing, drawing installation at LACMA, Los Angeles, CA

1987

Don Suggs, Struve Gallery, Chicago, IL

1985

Painting from 1982-84, LA Louver, Venice, CA Don Suggs: Paintings, Quint Gallery, San Diego, CA

1982

Don Suggs, LA Louver, Venice, CA Night Studies, Quint Gallery, San Diego, CA

1977

Don Suggs, LA Louver, Venice, CA

Public Collections

• Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA
• University of California, Los Angeles, CA
• University of California, Santa Barbara, CA
• Laguna Beach Museum of Art, Laguna Beach, CA
• La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla, CA
• Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM
• Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

External links

• UCLA Department of Art
• Biography and images at LA Louver gallery
• Ben Maltz Gallery

Footnotes

1. ^ Doug Harvey. "Don Suggs' Uncertainty Principle: We Are Experiencing Interference" Don Suggs: One Man Group Show (Los Angeles, CA: Otis College of Art and Design, Ben Maltz Gallery, 2007): 13.
2. ^ Meg Linton. Don Suggs: One Man Group Show Media Release (Los Angeles, CA: Otis College of Art and Design, Ben Maltz Gallery, June 2006): 1.
3. ^ Meg Linton. "Foreword" Don Suggs: One Man Group Show (Los Angeles, CA: Otis College of Art and Design, Ben Maltz Gallery, 2007): 3.
4. ^ Doug Harvey. "Don Suggs' Uncertainty Principle: We Are Experiencing Interference" Don Suggs: One Man Group Show (Los Angeles, CA: Otis College of Art and Design, Ben Maltz Gallery, 2007): 13.

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Name	Suggs, Don
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Date of birth	March 16, 1945
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