All works www.susanschneider.com

© 2007 Susan Schneider, all rights reserved.

Art making is an unpredictable adventure. After three decades of making art, I still don't know where the next turn will lead. As a San Francisco Art Institute student, in the 70's, I tried to emulate John Marin, Egon Sheile, Wayne Thiebaud, William T. Wiley. Later, I reinvestigated Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper and Georgia O'Keeffe. Though, I had studied painting briefly with Franklin Williams and William Geis at SFAI, I concentrated on drawing and printmaking. Back then, I thought plein air painting, began and ended with the French Impressionists. Painting got put on the back burner after college to pursue a career in graphic design. I didn't stop drawing from life. In 1991, during a camping trip through the East Mojave, I was so inspired by the desert landscape that I began to draw a large panoramic series of crayon and gouache drawings. That was the beginning of a body of work I am still involved with today.

I continue to draw weekly from the model with the Carquinez Strait Drawing Group. Recently we published a book, entitled Strait Drawing: 20 Years of Life Drawing by the Carquinez Strait Drawing Group. I've always considered myself a studio artist, working from primarily from photos and sketches in series. In 2001, frustrated in my attempts to find the right colors in pastel, I realized that I'd have to mix the colors I wanted to see in my work. So, I began painting again. Only this time, it was outside.

I am privileged, living in the San Francisco Bay Area, to be able to cross paths with so many contemporary masters of painting. Contact, feedback, and opportunities to learn abound. Every week there are new shows, paintouts and opportunities to gain new insights into art and craft. If I am stuck, I am surrounded by such an abundance of museum collections and galleries where I can go to see& learn from originals.

The San Francisco Bay Area continues to be a center of figurative and landscape painting. The Bay Area Model's Guild--the oldest, most well-respected guild of it's kind in the U.S.--is at the heart of a Bay Area Figurative Renaissance. Today there are over 80 figure painting/drawing groups meeting weekly in studios around the Bay Area. So much focused activity can't help but produce new approaches, new visions, and fresh perspectives. This time will be surely be looked upon as a golden age in California and Bay Area painting.

Diligent effort, patience for developing skills, constant readjustment of approach and method, and a good measure of humility and sheer faith are required of the would be artist. Always there is something to learn. Painting and figure drawing, as with playing piano, have exercises to practice. Often it's a journey into unknown territory. I am most satisfied with a piece if I have conveyed a mood, or sense of place. I especially like to surprise myself, to see what I come up. It's never what I think it's going to be. Many times I don't know, going into a painting, what I'm going to get. Some days aren't so good. Some days, I get lucky.

It's a great time--and place--to be an artist.