SUSAN NEILSON
Painting, Works on Paper, Illustration, Sculpture
Lifelines Series #1 - MEETING YOU
Oil on cedar
58” x 13.5” x 12”
This study on live-edge cedar was inspired by a whitetail family visiting just outside my studio next to Woodhaven Conservation Area in Kelowna. These gentle creatures are well adapted to their surroundings and very light on their feet, so they will almost always see you long before you notice them. As an artist who is also a mother, living next to a forest, I notice wild families and the challenges they face raising their young. Next to the Regional Park fence line, wild survivors face daily challenges with both natural predators and urban encroachment, but every spring they return to carry on as well as they can. I painted this piece as a tribute to a beautiful doe who lost one of her twins this spring. The project is a celebration of strength, resilience, and future generations.
City: Kelowna, British Columbia
Website: http://susanneilson.ca
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/foresthousestudioBC
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/susanneilson.art/
Artist Statement: Through art, I celebrate subtle balance of order and disorder in nature. My work is inspired by the resilience of wild survivors and by intricate connections in ecosystems right at our doorsteps or along the fence lines. Art is my way to share hope for the future, where change begins with caring.
Classical and contemporary processes are combined, using oils, watercolours and natural materials. Compositions balance intuitive energetic processes with underlying structure and precision of details. Current work includes a new "Lifelines" series of wildlife and plant studies, painted into natural wood grain with translucent layers of oils.
Biography: Susan Burnham Neilson is an artist and art educator who combines her experience in life drawing, painting, mixed-media, and sculpture methods, with personal interests in science and nature. She explores ways to integrate tradition and innovation; starting with direct hands-on processes.
In her British Columbia studio at the edge of a forest, Neilson's focus is on conservation and biophilia. Inspirations come from noticing universal connections: seeing patterns, beauty and power in wild surroundings and in human interactions with nature.