For more than three decades Suzan Pitt has been an internationally renowned creator of beautiful, strange and fiercely original animation. Perhaps because her breakthrough film ‘Asparagus‘ accompanied ‘Eraserhead’ on the midnight movie circuit, the work of Suzan Pitt has often been compared with that of David Lynch. He has talked about fishing the subconscious for his ideas, and it’s clear that Pitt sets out from a similar place; led by dream logic and a process of ‘interior sense-making’, with no clear idea of an end goal. The result is a small but unique body of work, tricky to pin down or explain but like works of visual poetry, bursting with surreal and sometimes disturbing images capable of crawling under your skin in unexpected ways.
Pitt’s synthesis of hand painted images with other experimental techniques such as scratch-on-film, cut-out and sand animation, infuse her work with a visceral quality unique in the world of animation. This helps to account for the long gaps between films, although her career also covers a fascinating range of other work including expanded cinema, opera, music video, environmental activism and her first love, painting.
An artist with a singular vision, LIAF welcomed Suzan Pitt to the Horse Hospital to present her body of work and take part in a Q & A on 31st March. We were thrilled to be able to bring you a rare retrospective featuring all of Pitt’s key works from the surrealist visual orgy of ‘Asparagus to’ her latest short, the haunting ‘Visitation’, as well as the UK premiere of ‘Persistence of Vision’, a 28 minute documentary exploring the inspirations, journeys and creative expression from which her films have evolved throughout her career.
And for those of you who were unable to attend… you can watch the Q&A right here!
