She is the F. H. Sellers Professor in Painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and lives and works in New York City.
"[3] Coffey is best known for her paintings of heads―often self-portraits, such as her Self Portrait, Versace (Canal) Scarf in the collection of the Honolulu Museum of Art.
Coffey’s art is one of empirical observation, constantly varied based on the subject she contemplates.
Like a teller of tales, she’s assumed varied guises, sometimes under dramatic lighting or extreme points of view, sometimes in flamboyant costumes or exaggerated make-up; she finds constant sources of invention in her own person and in the roles our society asks us to play.
[5] Susanna Coffey has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation.