Spence grew up splitting time between Manhattan and rural Maine, the daughter of a painter connected to the world of Maine-based art luminaries Fairfield Porter and Lois Dodd. She completed a residency at Skowhegan, received her BFA from Parsons School of Design and her MFA at the School of Visual Arts. Spence came of age in a wildly turbulent and exciting time to be a painter. The nineties marked a distinct transition from work that was socially motivated and conceptual to an art world that championed painting and painters. The current art world dominated by the art fair was still in its infancy. In the nineties, Spence worked as a curatorial assistant under Marsha Tucker at the New Museum, and in 1996, she was given her first exhibition at Colin de Land’s American Fine Art Co., an institution of change in its own right.  Suzy Spence’s work has been covered by The New York Times, Frieze Magazine, Esquire Magazine, Paper Magazine, The New Yorker, and The Independent. She has received fellowships and awards from New York Foundation for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center and Skowhegan School of Painting and Architecture.