ARTIST BIO

Susan Piesse  (pronounced Peace) lives beside the sea in Mt Eliza with her author husband Ken and special pets including two cats, two dogs and two goldfish. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts with First Class Honours from Monash University and continually extends her practice by taking classes with other artists at the Peninsula Art Society.

In addition to her watercolour paintings she is also regularly commissioned to paint portraits of people’s pets. 

Susan’s watercolour paintings are inspired by a deep connection with nature and her love and understanding of animals. Her special connection is communicated through delicately rendered works that are both studies of colour and light as well as details of nature and animals.

Susan grew up on a farm in the country. With a sketchbook as her constant companion she sketched and painted her family members, beloved Siamese cats and puppies, the skittish ponies she trained and the cows and sheep on the farm. Her emotive series of horse and cow paintings evoke this early training with her deft brush strokes revealing the twitching and rippling of muscles beneath skin and an innate understanding of anatomy.

The animal series are also experiments in the rendering of light and colour. A cow and calf stands out brightly against a muted green background as if caught in the final rays of the strong afternoon sun. Susan’s interest in the transformative effects of light is further chronicled in her series of beach landscapes, and landscapes with boats.

In these works that depict birds in flight across a silvery horizon or wooden boats on rippling water, it is the landscape in entirety that is the focus as the works become tonal studies; delicate, washed, illuminated and dark.