Bio
A native Californian, Susanna White spent her childhood summers at her grandmother’s home on the Maine Coast, there igniting her fascination with the interplay of water, light and clouds. She grew up in an inspired, artistic home in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the fog rolling in over Mount Tamalpais and the surrounding hills created the foundation of her artistic vision. As a full-time fine artist, Susanna balances her time between plein air, studio and commission work. Her oils and alkyds draw breath in the space between abstraction and realism. Susanna moved to the Pioneer Valley to attend Mount Holyoke College, where she earned her BA in Studio Art. She went on to earn her Studio Certificate in Painting and Drawing from The Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA in Painting from Tulane University.
As a teacher, Susanna uses positive feedback as an approach towards change in one their work, encouraging students to discover what they do well and how to grow from there. She particularly enjoys working with people who are afraid to start and are feeling stuck. Throughout her adult life Susanna has continued to learn from her students and fellow artists, appreciating the camaraderie of the greater Plein Air and painting community. Her paintings are held in private collections throughout the United States.
Artist Statement
Those moments of beauty that stop us in a parking lot, on a mountain top, as we sleepily take that first sip of coffee in the morning and look skywards only to be dumbstruck by the light dancing in the clouds and fog, simultaneously creating familiar and mysterious forms playing before us, asking us to join them in their frolic, are what I hope to honor in my work. Painting landscapes today seems absolutely necessary to emphasize the ephemeral beauty of our world that we are on the brink of losing. Painting landscapes has become a metaphor for the contradictions that life brings. I enjoy playing with those moments when abstraction meets realism; when paint shifts from physical substance to imagery; when hard edges become soft ones; and when lines turn to masses. The formal artistic exploration of transformation & contradiction become symbolic of those in life that I hope bespeak universal human struggles while celebrating those euphoric moments that make us resilient, joyful and alive.