About Ay Suza Koek

Born on August 2, 1983 in The Netherlands Suza was named Aydin Suzanna Koek, but nobody likes to be called Heidi when that is not their name (maybe not even when it is their name). "I'd much rather have been named Joyce or something, but then you'd risk being called 'juice' all the time."
She has thought about officially changing her name to something else, "I have thought about officially changing my name to something else," but since she didn't find anything she felt really suited her, she decided to go by a shortened version of her middle name, "For the time being, like a test drive or a comfy alternative," but family and friends who've always known her as Aydin still call her that, "Or Ay," but on most online places she has been using the name Suza.

"This must be terribly fascinating to people visiting my website for my art, to read about how I feel about my name. Maybe they're also interested in reading about how I have a celebrity crush on Ellen DeGeneres and that ATMs make me nervous."
That was just to break the ice. "I think people stopped reading after 'juice' anyway, or maybe even after 'Heidi'."
All right, let's get to the point, assuming there is one. Word is that she started drawing at a young age, "Age 3, or 4, says my dad."
Her father taught her to draw bicycles and that's all she would draw for a long time. Practice makes perfect. "Rinse and repeat." Sure. Now, we would share scans of those early drawings but "My dad burned them all, he's funny that way because he said he doesn't know where they are, but parents always say that when they don't want to admit your childhood memories went up in flames on a cold November night."

Suza was never very serious about her artwork until 2003 when "Our cable went out, TV and internet, so I had to find something else to do with my time!" She seems dedicated.
Sharing her drawings with friends and family, she learned that she wasn't half bad, some of her favorites from that period include her drawings titled Extinct and Namibian Desert. "That was back when I was still creative and able to tap into my imagination."

Late 2004 she tried her hand at painting, using oils on canvas because her father often used oils back in his painting days. But quickly she discovered that "Oils were not my thing. Around November 2004 I started on two paintings using oils, but the shit didn't dry until February 2005 and I needed them to be dry for what I wanted to do. Oil paint has its advantages but not for the way I work." She switched to acrylics after her first 4 oil paintings and hasn't looked back since.
"There are times that I just let my art sit there for 3 months but that's just because I'm lazy and not because I'm waiting for it to dry. I don't like it when the material I use has its own schedule."

Although these days she doesn't have distractions like cable TV, "YouTube calls out my name every day. There's always an interesting channel or a rollercoaster of episodes from my favorite TV shows on there that I can't refuse, all the while I have a piece of paper or canvas in front of me and a pencil or brush in my hand."
Could that be the reason why lately she has trouble using her imagination, to stay focused and complete her art? "Yes, I'm vegetating."

Now that we have a little more insight as to how she works, where does her art fit in? "I don't know, like your keys, I'm often misplaced. You never think to look for your keys in the fridge, you find them in there by accident because you were craving for some cheese. And I know I'm not the cheese, well, maybe to a few people, but in most cases I find that I'm the misplaced keys."
And.. "To me, it seems it's hard to find an 'audience' without being obnoxious while promoting your work if you're not mainstream material - I'm not even sure that's the right word but I'm sure it's close - and I don't want to be obnoxious but at the same time I do wish for some more acknowledgement, I just don't want to annoy anybody while I'm looking for that. But in a lot of places I guess you just have to be (a little) bold if you want to be noticed, I'm just not a very bold person."

So if you were to ask her to describe her work in one or two words, she would count to three, laugh nervously and shrug because "I don't think I fit in one box because I like to play with different kinds of styles and themes. So I would probably end up in various boxes or just one really large box labeled 'unidentifiable body parts and a can of beer' or just, you know, 'miscellaneous'."

That's as clear as it's going to get. She doesn't know what she's doing, this 25 year old woman who compares herself to a set of misplaced keys, does what she does when she's not distracted by episodes of Dinosaurs that she finds on YouTube.

"Can anybody tell me how to pronounce the name of my website?"

Thank you for your interest in Suza's story and for getting to the bottom of this page. Unfortunately, there is no reward.