Susiehyer has been drawing and painting since she was a child. “I remember drawing a pair of ceramic flamingos my mother used to keep on her dining room table when I was four years old”, she says. “I knew from that moment I would be an artist when I grew up.”
Born Susan Lynn Hyer in 1954, and known by the moniker Susiehyer, she was fortunate to have multiple art classes in both primary and secondary public education at West Essex Regional High, North Caldwell, NJ. Attending art programs at Moravian College, The Baum School of Art, and the University of West Florida in the 1970’s, she continues to study and expand her repertoire and abilities, attending the Art Students League of Denver and participating in workshops whenever she can, with artists such as Quang Ho, Kim English, Ron Hicks, Jay Moore, and Kevin Weckbach. In 2001 she also completed the Denver Botanical Gardens Certificate in Botanical Art and Illustration.
This award winning artist has been working professionally since 1976 and has been the recipient of a number of scholarships, grants, and awards for her work, including two international design awards. Her work has appeared in numerous galleries and national exhibitions, hangs in many private and corporate collections, and has been published in the celebrated books Art of the National Parks: Historical Connections, Contemporary Interpretations and Landscapes of Colorado. Susiehyer’s work has also been featured in Southwest Art Magazine, Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine, Art of the West Magazine, Plein Air Magazine, and on the covers of Art Life, Evergreen Living, and Mountain Country Life. Most recently she was included in the American Art Collector Series of books. She has been a National Vice President of the Women’s Caucus for Art, President of the New Orleans Chapter, and is a signature member of Oil Painters of America , signature member of the American Impressionist Society, Plein Air Painters of New Mexico , signature member of Plein Air Artists of Colorado, and Plein Air Painters of Hawaii. Known to her friends and fellow painters as an enthusiastic, “lets-do-it” kind of artist, she says, “I can always set up some kind of challenge for myself, something I want to explore with painting.” You can find her painting in 90 degree heat on a Denver sidewalk, standing knee-deep in snow or on snowshoes, or painting at night with a headlamp on top of her head.
Always wanting to learn and grow as a painter, she constantly tries new things with new materials and ways of putting down paint. She works easily on cotton or linen canvas or canvas paper, gessobord, birch panels, or masonite. “What happens if I paint THAT but do it THIS way?” is a phrase she can be heard saying. This accounts for the slight stylistic differences in the look of the paintings. Most recently she has chosen to focus on the visual aspects of painting, thanks to the influences of such noted painters as Kevin Weckbach and Quang Ho. Landscape painting is, at the moment, her current passion, although “any subject matter is fair game for a painting exploration, especially, but not always, if it doesn’t move.”
Susiehyer maintains a home, studio, and multiple gardens in Evergreen, Co where she lives with her husband, sometimes one or two grown children, a dog, two cats, and numerous elk, deer, and other wildlife. She continues to push herself in new directions and challenge herself artistically, traveling to paint “en plein air” (outdoors/on location), and working from sketches, field studies, and photos in the studio. Painting trips outside of Colorado usually include Grand Canyon, Zion National Park and southern Utah, Sedona, Taos, California and Hawaii. And when the right opportunity arises, there is international travel as well…..Mexico, Tahiti, Belize, Corsica, France, Portugal. She teaches workshops out of her studio in Evergreen and is an invited juror for local and and national exhibits.
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