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.

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.