In addition to her Water Study and Untitled series, Susan has been moving toward abstraction with a third painting series wholly distinct from the others. Now totaling six paintings in all, the Landscape of Resonances series takes the natural world and distills it to its essences: light, heat, form, color.

The most recent painting in Susan’s abstract Water Study series, Water Study 005 pushes viewers out of their comfort zone and upends the color story we associate with water: clear blues and milky greens. Instead, Susan gives us the opposite end of the color spectrum—hues that could be interpreted as the last coral traces of a peaceful sunset reflected on the ocean, or as a corrosive, clogged and wholly unnatural waterway.

While Susan has fully embraced abstract painting only for the past few years, there was foreshadowing of a major artistic revolution in some of her earlier work, like Exploding Sky from 2008 or even Calm Day from 2009.

Susan is an artist who not only sees, but also relishes the contrasts of nature. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in her inspiration itself. For large portions of the year, she paints from her mountaintop studio in Utah, surrounded by the repetitive linear forms of bare aspen trunks and the craggy peaks of the high desert. There’s a sharpness to Susan’s pieces created in the West.