BELLA ITALIA by Sue Katz

12/02/2021-02/07/2022

The D’Aguilar Art Foundation is excited to present Bella Italia, a new collection of collage and mixed media paintings by Sue Katz that reflect on her travels to Italy. For about 7 years, Katz travelled back and forth between there and The Bahamas, taking inspiration from the vibrant landscapes and people. The result is a breathtaking series of artwork that departs from her usual collage work about Bahamian social politics and focuses on her picturesque encounters with the Italian culture.

“Italy has become my happy place,” she says when she is describing the inspiration for the work. She calls the collection of artworks a “scrapbook of her experiences” that she had in cities like Florence and Rome – they are snapshots of the beauty that she encountered that is quite different from her Nassau home. In many ways, this collection is a response to the lockdown restriction that we all experienced in the past two years; the works are a rumination on times when Katz was free to travel, and the bright open landscapes she depicts reflect the joy that was hard to feel during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sue Katz (Born in 1962, Boston, Massachusetts, USA) is a multidisciplinary artist known for her complex collages.She often layers colors and patterns and adds other mediums such as depth and richness to her final works. She attended Syracuse University School of Visual Arts and the Rhode Island School of Design and has a BA in Illustration. Katz also studied at the Santa Reparata International School of Art in Florence, Italy.