Toss n Tell – May

Running an Art Business in a Changing world with Susan Sheppard

Love it or hate it, so many opportunities have opened up in recent years with far reaching media platforms.

How to sell our work is something we have all wrestled with. Whether it be visual art, sculpture or textiles they all have something in common: Creativity.

In this interactive session Susan will help us see other ways possible to put creativity to work.

Susan’s art business has been mostly by traditional means but once she decided who her ideal clients were ( feature pieces for home owners, investors and corporate) it was the most appropriate way to go.

It’s exciting times with so many options.

Susan is one of our newer felters but has been a realist painter for many years. She particularly enjoys large-scale landscapes rich in colour and this shows in her beautiful felt creations.

Her early experiences with her farming family gave her the freedom to explore the natural environment. It has left a life-long love of undisturbed habitat. Earlier life focussed around a science degree, 20 years science teaching, 10 years as a florist and being encompassed by family life. She has two adult children.

She feels greatly privileged to be in WA at a time of great economic growth while parts of our environment are still pristine wilderness. Together with her husband, Peter, she travels, often to remote locations, to experience the vast diversity of pristine habitat. This enables her to immerse herself in the experience and collect images.

Her challenge is to re-create optical illusions on a flat surface, so that the audience also gets the sense of joy she felt when visiting these places. Water is an ever-present feature in Susan Sheppard’s paintings. Even in harsh, dry locations, she generally chooses to depict aspects made lush by the gift of water. There may also be a closet geologist within. She has a great fondness for depicting rocks in their many forms.