Outrage and empathy are the reactions that Sue Coe reflects in her work. Her unrelenting examination of social and political atrocities is expressed in paintings, drawings, and prints. Her work takes an unflinching look at people in power, racism, war, the place of women, victims of AIDS, the vulnerability of children, and the violation of animals in factory farms, slaughterhouses, and laboratories. Here, in this print, Coe presents a predatory bird with a golden beak crying out for war. It hovers over a mob that supports the call, not aware that it is those present who will go to fight.

Coe was born in 1951 in Tamworth, England, near Liverpool. She studied at the Royal College of Art, London, 1970-1973. She came to New York where she worked as an illustrator for the New York Times op-ed page. Her political activism and her work as an artist in one. She makes prints and books because the multiple image can reach the widest audience. The ASU Art Museum is the archive of her graphic output, with a print from every edition she has made.

Sue Coe has shown her work at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Georges Pompidou Center, Paris; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; United Nations, NY; Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Drawing Center, NY; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA. She is represented by Galerie St. Etienne, NY.  In 1996, the ASU Art Museum originated and toured Heel of the Boot: Prints by Sue Coe, an exhibition that contextualized her work with historic and contemporary prints from the collection that engage social issues by William Hogarth, Francisco de Goya, Thomas Nast, and Leopoldo Mendez.

Jean Makin, Marilyn A. Zeitlin