suzanne truman

featured artist
Suzanne Trumann

“All spring, I watched the rising blue-green grass,
above its gleaming and substantial shadows,
toss in the breeze, like wings.”
--- Mary Oliver

Nature offers a myriad of sensations and awakens a sense of discovery when one is
“exploring” their surroundings. Colors and textures inspire a lyrical essence of story.
Being absorbed in my surroundings, with senses engaged, elicits a sense of wonder.
Robin’s egg blue sky, indigo nights, aqua seas, red rock canyons; vermilion, azure,
sienna, and viridian patinas of lichen
covered rocks - These visual and emotional experiences inform
my paintings. Thus, the exterior landscape fuels my
interior landscape (psyche, mind’s eye, soul).

While painting, I strive to use the elements of an additive and subtractive process in
a harmonious way, to evoke a metaphorical aspect of my natural surroundings,
and the cumulative effects of natural events that shape the land, and objects
therein, over time. As the surface evolves, I sand, scrape and scratch back into the
many painted layers.
By intuitively responding to emerging images I feel that I am both weaving and
unraveling a “story”. I seek to reveal this “discovery” through each finished painting.
(When complete, I hope to have images that suggest found objects. That is why I
conceal my brush strokes).
For myself, these paintings function as tiny aspects of the wonder felt in “The Land”
that can not be explicitly (realistically) represented. In turn, I hope these minimal
abstractions stir the “interior landscape” of each viewer and inspire their own sense
of discovery.

Suzanne was born In Phoenix, Arizona; raised on farms and ranches in Arizona and
California until her Family moved to Kentucky when she was 15. She returned west
after attending a year at The University of Kentucky. She worked in Yellowstone
National Park and lived in Hawaii for three years before migrating to the Rocky
Mountains to finish
her art degree in Bozeman. From there Suzanne moved to Missoula, Montana to
complete her MFA, in painting.

Blue Sky Day - 36" x 36" Oil and wax on canvas

After graduate school she
taught backcountry field
courses in Alaska and
along the Rio Grande
and Big Bend National
Park for two years.
She went on to teach painting
and drawing at
The University of Montana-
Western and Montana
State University for the
next seven years.
Presently, Suzanne lives
with her husband
and their cat in
Bozeman, Montana.
The open west, and a
sense of place, continue
to strongly influence
her paintings.