Glenn Suokko’s work as an artist has matured alongside a long career working independently as a book designer for art museums and publishers.
Today
American artist, Glenn Suokko, is known for his oil paintings. Over the past twenty-five years, he has assiduously reinvented his approach to painting, creating a unique body of work.
Working from his studio in Woodstock, Vermont, Suokko shows his paintings at a nearby gallery space, on this website, and privately at his painting studio.
In addition to his artwork, he is also active in developing book projects and catalogue raisonnés, focusing on modern artists.
Artist
Glenn Suokko’s oil paintings are situated at the crossroads of imagery in still life, landscape, and non-representational works. His relationship to painting traditions and his knowledge of its history allow him the space to create works that reference the intersections of art and design, representation and abstraction, and control and spontaneity.
“If there is a common denominator in my work, it is the interpretation of quietude and beauty that is influenced by the seasonal rhythm of my immediate surroundings where I live and work in rural Vermont. Silence, elegance, and simplicity are important to me, and I seek to express those qualities in my paintings.”
His paintings, sought by established and first-time art collectors, are in many private residences across the United States, and in Europe, Asia, and Australia.
Gallery
Since 2009, Glenn and Ann Suokko have overseen the art gallery they developed in association with glassmaker Simon Pearce in Quechee, Vermont, offering visitors a calm, un-pressured exhibition space to see Suokko’s work and the work of other artists they present, displayed in elegant installations. Featured today are Suokko’s oil paintings, design projects, and a collection of antiquarian objects.
Book Designer
Working independently from his design studio in Vermont since 1991, Glenn Suokko has designed and produced over two hundred art books and exhibition catalogues for publishers such as Hatje Cantz, Berlin; and Rizzoli International Publications, New York; and for art museums such as the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia; Harvard University Art Museums, Cambridge; List Visual Arts Center, MIT, Cambridge; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover; and the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit; and over forty exhibition catalogues for the Studio Art Exhibition Program at Dartmouth College to accompany the program’s series of artist residencies and shows.
His work has been the subject of editorial features in Print magazine, Metropolitan Home, and Emigre magazine. His work is represented in the permanent collection of the Copper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
Catalogue Raisonné
Over the last twenty years, Glenn Suokko has designed a series of catalogue raisonnés in three languages—Chinese, French, and English—as part of the Archives of Modern Chinese Art, a publishing project by The Li Ching Cultural and Educational Foundation in Taipei, Taiwan, that began in 2001 with Sanyu: Catalogue Raisonné, Oil Paintings, the first-ever published catalogue raisonné on a Chinese artist. To date, they have collaborated on eight titles presenting the work of Sanyu, Pan Yu Lin, and Ting Yin Yung. In 2024, they produced Sanyu: His Life and Complete Works in Oil, the definitive biography and catalogue raisonné on the French Chinese artist, who today is one of the most coveted modern artists, his paintings having repeatedly broken world records for Chinese modern Western-style art.
Author, Photographer, and Designer
In addition to Glenn Suokko’s work as an artist and graphic designer, he is also an author, photographer, and designer of books on art and design, focusing on Vermont subjects. He is coauthor, photographer, and designer of A Way of Living (Simon Pearce); author, photographer, and designer of Simon Pearce: Design for Living (Rizzoli International), and Shelburne Farms: House, Gardens, Farm, and Barns (Rizzoli International); creator and publisher of Peter Brooke: The Nature of Memory and Experience, Peter France, and Marsh, Billings, Rockefeller in Woodstock. In 2005, he created with his wife Ann Suokko, Pastoral, a journal that features the individuals, organizations, and products inspired by the fertile and creative environments in Vermont. In 2017, they introduced A New Pastoral, a quarterly home cooking journal.
Early Work and Education
Glenn Suokko studied art and design at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan (MFA, 1988) and Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, Massachusetts (BFA, 1982).
In 1985 as art director for CW Communications, a computer magazine publisher based in Peterborough, NH, he interviewed Andy Warhol at the artist’s “Factory” studio in New York City while Warhol created a digital self-portrait for the cover of Amiga World magazine (READ MORE). The interview has since been translated into several languages and in 2004 was reissued in I’ll be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews: 1962–1987 (Carroll & Graf, New York).
As senior designer for Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota (1988–1991), Glenn Suokko oversaw the museum’s publication design, graphic design, and exhibition graphics, and while there, was also art director of Design Quarterly, co-published with The MIT Press. He was actively involved in the creation of the landmark exhibition Graphic Design in America: A Visual Language History, as well as the exhibition design and catalogue design (Abrams, New York).