Susan Webb

Susan S. Webb is an artist living in Stantonsburg, NC. Her art education began at Wilson Community College and included classes in painting, photography, and stained glass making. Extensive study in painting followed at Barton College under the direction of J. Chris Wilson, Ben Bridgers, Maureen O’Neil and Susan Fecho. She studied under Mel Stanforth of East Carolina University also and studied Photoshop under the direction of Gerard Lange at Barton. The mediums she has used in these classes have been oil, acrylic, pastel and mixed media. She is a serious art student and continues to take classes when she can. She considers herself a lifelong learner. Her paintings include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and abstracts. Her art over the years expresses many different styles from realistic to abstract. She continues to experiment with different painting techniques. Webb has been a longtime member of the Wilson Active Artists Association and has served as newsletter editor and Vice President and served two terms as President of the Association. She also served three years on the Board of Directors of the Arts Council of Wilson, a number of years on the ACW Visual Arts Committee and is active in the local art community. Webb has exhibited her art in numerous solo and group exhibitions. Her art work is in private collections across the United States.

I gather my inspiration to create art from many different sources. One of my first inspirations came from wanting to decorate my house with artwork. I did many master studies in accomplishing that goal. Then through my studies at Barton College, I began to learn more about color theory and the many guidelines for creating a good painting. I began to study light and shadows to create pleasing landscapes. I was motivated to create a series of similar paintings which I thought would make consistent themed exhibitions, my first being NC lighthouses which sent me on journeys to the different ones in North Carolina. I also have done a large series of still lifes which include many flower paintings and a large series of figurative paintings of ladies. I am inspired by nature, light , color, people, animals, and the great master painters.

I do much preliminary thinking about color concept, what to take out of the photo to paint or what to add to make it a better composition and what mood I want to evoke in the painting. I sometimes use Photoshop to accomplish this step. I start the actual painting by sketching the objects on my canvas with thinned paint in a neutral color followed by painting the objects loosely, then adding the details. My favorite part of the process is when the painting takes on a life when I get down to the final stages.