Susan Righter Art & Design

Wedding preview weekend with complete!

Saturday studio session…work in progress. Pink and green have been calling to me lately.

Just a small selection of my collection of beautiful books. As an artist, inspiration is essential. Perusing a gorgeous book always moves me off center—especially if it’s about flowers!

Sketchbook snippets…all from the last few weeks, all influenced by the season. For those of you who have been following me for a while, you know I love flowers and Spring colors. Naturally, I find this season of rebirth and growth very inspiring.

Sketchbooks are not perfect. Sketchbooks are messy. Sketchbooks offer a glimpse into choices over time as a way to see where I want to go with my art. Colors that energize or calm me. Marks that feel right. Expression for the sake of staying plugged into a practice. A way of exploring ideas in a visual way.

I’ve always used sketchbooks on some level, especially when I’m working on a specific project to figure out ideas, but lately with guidance from an art coach, I’m realizing there’s so much more to it than that and that these little books can be my guide if I let them!

I had these pages open in an airport recently, and a nice man glanced over my shoulder and asked, “Did you paint that?” I said “yes,” and he said, “those are good.” Then he talked about his hobby of painting in watercolor—a little random moment of connection with a stranger.

Gold, both literally and figuratively. Sitting with my siblings in my parents’ home a couple of weeks ago after my father passed, we discovered this treasure. A reminder of a favorite pastime of mine growing up in the 1970’s. With no devices, not even good tv reception, to keep me entertained, I would open the bottom cabinets of our built-in cabinet in the den and pull out all the photo albums and cameras to keep me entertained. I remember the cover of this one so vividly. A core memory unlocked.

With my father now passed on, we’re processing. When we opened this album, we were each flooded with our own core memories. Our mother is still living, but with Alzheimer’s, which is so sad, because all that she is and was to us has almost disappeared completely. I’ve included just a couple of the images from the album that stirred me the most—in the best possible way. Seeing how my parents are looking at me in these pics moves me. I’m so grateful to them both for who they were and how they poured into us.

The pull for me to honor my parents’ legacy is coming through so clearly for me, and I’m certain it will find its way into my art this year. Be on the lookout for some splashes of vintage gold in my new work.💛
❤️