ARTIST STATEMENT

My favorite subjects to paint are those that I pass everyday.  A particular building, or farm, or even a group of animals will catch my eye. If my attention keeps returning to it, that’s something I’ll have to paint.  I enjoy painting subjects further from home too, but there’s an extra satisfaction in capturing what’s near and dear to me. My second passion is still life painting. It’s an opportunity to explore color,  composition, and viewpoint in a setting I can control. Every material, be it glass, metal, cloth, or a ripe piece of fruit, offers a challenge and an opportunity to explore the quality of light. I largely paint alla prima in oils.

ARTIST BIO

Although an avid drawer and painter since a young age, Susan’s formal education has taken a few twists and turns. Finding few options for training in the representational painting style she loves, her natural flair for mathematics led her to major in statistics at Princeton. There she was profoundly influenced by John Tukey and his highly creative and non-conventional approach to using numbers to describe the world.

Next, Susan pursued her PhD at Duke University where she studied the evolution of butterfly wing color pattern, combining her enthusiasm for data analysis with the beauty of nature. Along the way she still found time to paint. 

Susan was inspired to take up her paint brush more seriously in a watercolor class at the Carrboro ArtsCenter with Luna Lee Ray.  More recently, Susan has studied still life oil painting with Oregon artist Sarah Sedwick and landscape painting with Australian painter Colley Whisson.