Susan Diehl

The person behind the work

I was born in Sheboygan Wisconsin. My life's journey into painting began as a small girl. My sister was always reading and I was always drawing. I studied fine art at the University of WI, but feel my real training began when I moved to Seattle WA and met my mentor Ron Lukas who taught in the Russian Impressionist tradition. While living in the Northwest I met William F. Reese who has had a profound influence on my art career. After 12 years painting in that part of the country, I moved with my husband, artist Doug Diehl and our three children to Phoenix AZ. We joke that we moved from "rust to dust", "moss to Hoss". I have definitely had the experience of many different types of landscape to paint. I love to travel to the ocean and paint the beaches and coastlands and to the mountains in the autumn and winter. I love to paint in Wisconsin when I come home to visit my family. Deciding which motif is my favorite is virtually impossible, I am even beginning to love painting the desert. When I am not painting the landscape I paint still life and figures. I love to put it all together in compositions that contain figures in their environment. I believe that painting is communication without words. The story I have to tell is simply about things that I think are visually beautiful. Whether it be: a particular color combination, a pattern, a light struck object, a time of day, it is my goal to share the beauty that I see in everyday things as well as grand vistas. Laundry, hanging out on the line with the sun shinning through can be as beautiful to me as the Tetons at dawn. My hope is that you will enjoy looking at my work and that my paintings give you an opportunity to have a moment when you're looking at them to think about similar times in your life when you have come across something you think is really beautiful.