Susan Faust

My process as an abstract artist is about making art that speaks of my internalized perceptions and feelings formed over a lifetime of immersion in the natural world. I have always found mystery and magic in beautiful, wild places. Having spent 25 years painting the landscape imprinted me in many ways. My work is inspired by the immersion of my life in that world. I am intrigued by those things in nature observed as well as the things hidden but sensed. They make you look deeply sometimes or whisper to you from out of nowhere at other times. Reflections, water, wind, things fading and coming to life are elements that intrigue me. Movement as it relates to life and music are at the core of my process. I paint following a tone, a recognized frequency of experience stored in my consciousness. I begin a painting as a moving mediation or dance, starting with curving lines, and a color and let the piece evolve as it will with no idea of where it will go. I follow the painting, allowing what emerges and following its path. I love the flow, richness of color and surface of oil paint, my primary medium, often leaving thick brush strokes as a record of immediate response. Each painting is unique, emerging as a kind of internal landscape, fleeting sensations of places, the tracks of my souls’ movement through my memories. It is fluidity that I paint about. It is the mysterious movement of nature and existence, the rhythm of my life, that has moved me to paint from my emotional world.

Susan Faust has had a lifetime love affair with making art. She has spent more than 40 years as a professional artist working in several different mediums. Susan graduated from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 1973 with a BA in Fine Art. Upon graduation, she pursued a career as a professional ceramicist and production potter. Soon thereafter she received a an Artist-in-Residence grant from the state of West Virginia for two years and was considered one of the most successful master potters in the southeast. But, hundreds of pots later and scores of craft shows behind her, her real passion for drawing and painting was going unfulfilled. One day, Susan walked out of her studio and never looked back.She packed up and moved to Sedona, Arizona, in 1985, becoming the director of the Ceramics Department at the Sedona Art Center while continuing to study painting with some of the most gifted artists in the country. Susan went on to become a successful pastelist and plein air oil painter and has taught workshops and classes in painting around the country, Europe, and Australia. She is the recipient of numerous awards in American and International exhibitions, and her work hangs in corporate and private collections internationally. Susan was a featured plein air pastel artist in the PBS television series, The Artist's Workshop, was a judge for the International Art Prize and was a featured artist in Pastel Artist International Magazine. She lives in Santa Fe.

2-D, Drawing, Painting (all materials)