"Red Hot 1" Framed Acrylic on Handmade Paper by David Gary Suazo
8" x 10"
 
David Gary Suazo
 
A native of Taos, but raised in Denver, Suazo has lived and worked in Taos since 1987. 
 David Gary Suazo began his painting career using the empty pages in his mother’s encyclopedia set. In his sixth grade art class, the teacher, who knew of the Taos Society of Artists, introduced him to southwest art.
 
While attending high school in Denver, Suazo took the highest level art classes available by the time he was a junior. He started out with pencil on paper doing wildlife drawings. His father taught him how to sketch using free sketch technique, which is drawing without looking at the sketchpad. Suazo is also a self-taught artist in the mediums of monotypes painting, drawing and pastels.
 
After graduation, Suazo attended the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe. Influences in his life include his parents, grandparents, and also his great-grandfather; who was a model for E.L. Cause and Joseph Sharp. Suazo became serious about painting and started using canvases with pencil-like paints. He experimented with sizes ranging from miniature to large size canvas.
 
In the early years after moving back to Taos, Suazo was employed by artist Frank Howell in Santa Fe; working for his gallery doing tasks that included delivering paintings and mixing colors for artists who worked in the same medium. 
 
Suazo has entered shows and has won awards for his paintings. Some of which include the Eight Northern Pueblos, the annual market SWAIA Indian Market, the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Millicent Rogers Museum, and many other places in the country. His pieces have also traveled around the world, shown in places such as England and Italy, and have been purchased by clients throughout the world.
 
Suazo’s paintings have a quiet, peaceful feeling and leave out all the noise of the modern world. An architect with color and texture, he uses paint to build the uneven wall, the layers of stone, the very ground of the Taos Pueblo. “We use whatever nature has to offer to make the homes we live in,” states Suazo.