Hello my friend.
I’m so grateful you have arrived here to this page. My name is Suzanne and I am an artist. I paint portraits with plant dyes and inks that I create myself by foraging plants from the landscape. I spend time with the Earth and I love her. She is my mother and I belong to her. I ask her for permission first. I listen. I invite her into my studio. I paint portraits because I feel energy moving through my body and arms as I do it. It began in my sketchbook and moved onto the “canvas”. I paint on fabric and love textiles. I often incorporate embroidery or hand stitching into my work. The most important thing to me as an artist is to paint from my heart and thereby be a channel for the Spirit who moves through all things and as a result, a healing presence of love in this world. That is the point of everything I do.
May you be blessed today as you wander through my art and listen to the whispers of your own heart’s guidance.
Listen to my interview with the Daily Rally:
Below are a few short videos of my process and a bit of my story as well. I hope you enjoy it.
This is a short video of me making handmade earth pigment watercolor paint in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. I gathered rocks and dirt from New Mexico and Colorado and made it into pigment. The pigment I’m using in this video is from a rock I found in Colorado on my road trip across the country as I moved back east.
This is a video of me making earth pigment watercolor paint in Abiquiu, New Mexico before I got my muller (which is a tool used to make watercolor paint). I spent 4 days camping alone in Abiquiu during the time I filmed this video. The purpose of this was to seek guidance from this beautiful natural place as I considered my next steps after finishing graduate school in art therapy and clinical counseling. It was here that I made the decision to move back to the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina.
Short clips of art making in northern New Mexico, the Blue Ridge Mountains and all the way out to the Outer Banks of North Carolina.
This is the same video as above with the long version (me talking at the end of the video about my process and plans and thoughts etc.) Enjoy! The end was filmed in Abiquiu, New Mexico.
This video was made for a school assignment while I was in graduate school for art therapy and clinical counseling at Southwestern College. It was made as a way to creatively process my internship. I went into nature once a week and made a painting in nature during that time. I journaled a little about my internship experience on the back of each painting. No clients are shown or talked about by name. I share a little about some of the experiences I had while working with clients without violating anyone’s privacy.
Very short video of me in the Blue Ridge Mountains outside my house painting in my sketchbook with earth pigment watercolor paint. enjoy!