Susan's Story

Susan has been taking black and white photos for many years. Inspired by the beauty of the Big Sur Coastline while living in California, she began experimenting with new techniques including hand tinting to create new effects on canvas and to show a different point of view in her art work.

She displayed much of her work along the famed Cannery Row in Monterey and in art shows in the Carmel area before moving to Richmond, Virginia. As a native of the area the history of Virginia had always intrigued her, so she began gathering hsitoric photos from old archives, cleaning them up and hand tinting them. Not only did she get "hooked" on the images she found, but so did her clients. The result has been displaying them in art shows all over Virginia and in local galleries. Her small collection of primarily Richmond photos has now grown to include the Civil War, Northern Virginia, the rural South, water scenes, Native Americans and more.

"As I began collecting these images women began to emerge in so many different areas from the women spies of the Civil War, rural scenes of women working in the fields, to women in professions long ago that we have forgotten. They are also in sports events we thought were strictly a "man's world" long ago. I decided we needed to celebrate these women. We needed to celebrate where we had been and the things we had accomplished."

For more than a year, Susan gathered women's photos to put together a special show that opened in February of 2008 at the Crossroads Art Gallery in Richmond. The show includes 40 photos of ordinary women doing extraordinary things. "While I could not resist picking the Civil War Spies, I really concentrated on women no one had heard about because there are so many of us and we need to celebrate that fact."

"I think we forget the importance of women in sculpting our society -- its feelings, emotions, its passion and beauty -- and how influential this has been in all areas of the world as we know it today. Whether in front of the crowd marching for the right to vote, to working in the coal mines, on the railroad and struggling in the rural areas to keep family together, it is important to remember how vital this energy is so that we can celebrate ourselves no matter where we are or what we are doing. It's only when we can celebrate our past that we can build a brighter more beautiful future!"

Currently Susan does travels all over the state of Virginia in the spring and in the fall doing about 30 shows, and displays her work at several galleries in the area.