Emmelene Landon's Memoir of Painter Susanne Hay

Emmelene Landon has published 'Susanne' with Éditions Léo Scheer, a book that memorializes her friendship with the late painter Susanne Hay, who died accidentally at age 42. Rather than a biography, Landon's work is an attempt to preserve vivid memories of their two-decade bond. They met at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in 1985 in the studio of Cremonini, sharing formative years where Hay not only mastered technique but developed a profound understanding of the world through painting. Hay's practice was marked by isolation and regularity; she sought time, calm, and silence to live a solitary, nocturnal life dedicated to her craft. Landon illustrates how Hay's painting evolved as both gesture and thought, with objects becoming elements in space that challenged her to paint disorder as a kind of defiance. The book includes letters, drafts of permission requests to paint in restricted-access places like the metro, warehouses, and morgues, along with about thirty reproductions. It leaves the impression that nothingness haunted Hay's singular life, spent producing canvases where reflections assure us of the world's consistency. Much of her overlooked work was found in plastic bags in a basement that served as her studio.