Born in Stoutenburg, The Netherlands, in 1960, Suus Kooijman is a Dutch artist who lives and works in Achterveld. She studied Fashion Design and Fashion Illustration at the Utrecht University of the Arts and graduated in 1993. After working in fashion and illustration, Kooijman turned toward autonomous art. She began painting around 2000, first developing large abstract wall objects and later expanding into monumental paintings and smaller encaustic landscapes.
Suus Kooijman works with beeswax, pigment, Japanese paper, ink, chalk and drawing. Her process is intuitive and layered. Warm wax is mixed with colour and allowed to flow into and over previous passages. Paper may be embedded, marks may be added, and areas are scraped back or reopened. The image develops gradually through a balance of intervention and accident. Kooijman begins without a completely fixed destination and responds to what the material reveals.
The transparency of beeswax is fundamental. It allows the painting to unfold both on the surface and beneath it. Earlier marks remain visible through later layers, creating depth without conventional perspective. A landscape, field, architectural structure or figure may appear, disappear and return as the work changes. The viewer is invited to look into the painting rather than only at it.
Kooijman is interested in traces of use, erosion, architecture and human presence. Weathered walls, old materials, shadows, urban rhythms and marks in notebooks can enter her visual vocabulary. Growing up on a farm also shaped her attention to nature, physical labour, seasonal rhythm and the beauty of materials altered by time. These references are transformed into abstract compositions rather than depicted directly.
The works represented by NewHouse Gallery mark a return to painting after years in which Kooijman developed increasingly spatial, minimal wall objects. They bring together the experience of both periods: spontaneous gesture, material depth, architectural structure and a strong sense of stillness. In a culture dominated by smooth digital surfaces, her work insists on tactility, imperfection and the visible presence of the hand. NewHouse Gallery represents Suus Kooijman in Amsterdam. Browse available works by Suus Kooijman and explore her exhibition history.