artist: Susan, painter

Third in my artists and craftsmen series.
Some weeks ago, my friend, artist Susan Schmitt, allowed me to spend a morning with her, observing and photographing her as she painted, her inspirations, methods, tools and techniques.

With a fresh bouquet of flowers from the garden as inspiration, she transformed a piece of white paper into a lovely expression of summer beauty.  She explained to me that different projects require levels of time and emotion investment.  Some are "show dogs," and some are like a family dog - sometimes a person admires piece but it is not the right investment for them, but everyone should be able to live with art.  Susan draws, carves, stamps, paints, subtracts, redraws, and works til her vision comes together.  She creates everything from printed cards and journals to one-of-a-kind dolls, too.   

She journals with watercolors - sometimes, while her husband is driving!  

Also, Susan is in my knitting group, and has the most adorable grandbaby, so she's a well-rounded lover-of-beautiful-things.  One of the aspects I like most about her work is choice of subjects.  She has a series of cards / illustrations called Women I Might Have Known.  Whenever she publishes a new one, she posts a story on her blog about them.  

And she gives good life advice, but you can't buy that on her site, I'm just lucky to know that.  

Susan is also on Instagram:  susanschmittart.