Susan Coleman

Early art

I remember as a fourth-grader suddenly becoming extremely popular because I was the kid who could draw Charlie Brown. That was a big deal, because most kids weren't that interested, and see, they would say, "Well, I can't draw." Well, of course they couldn't draw, they didn't draw. You learn how to do it by doing it. If you're sort of obsessed by it a little bit, then you sort of start to succeed on certain levels.

There was a woman, named Marie Lietzinger, who was an artist. My mother heard about her and she decided that I should have lessons. And so, as a child, maybe in fifth grade, I would go to her house once a week, I think on Saturdays, for an hour and learn some things about oil painting and stuff like that. That was pretty neat.

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Best advice

Virginia Myers teaches printmaking at Iowa. Probably the first advice she ever gave me and maybe the best advice she ever gave me, was—I'd had kind of a tough critique with someone and I wasn't really sure if I was going to stay in grad school. And she said, "If you're going to make it in this business, you're going to have to have the hide of a rhinoceros and the nose of a rabbit." And it's absolutely true. And she knows, you really have to follow your instincts and you have to be very tough to be an artist.

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Using camera

Although I'd been taught never to use a camera in my artwork—at some point I was really getting interested in landscape, and I decided that I'd just take some pictures down at the farm. I found points of view where I wouldn't normally be able to stand to paint or sit to paint. You could climb a tree or you could stand right on the edge of a cliff or in the middle of the highway, if you wanted to. I wasn't trying to copy the photograph. I was really trying to use it as a note-taking device, just to remind me what it was that I had seen there—about the light, about cast shadows, about value contrast, or how many trees there were. Because that way I can work no matter what the weather condition. Or I can work at midnight when everyone's asleep and I don't have to worry about the light changing on me or anything like that.

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Describing her art

How would I describe my art? I think it's based on a love of nature. I take a lot of inspiration in looking at forms around me, and I often find that I get some perspective on other issues while I'm drawing. Nature has a way of giving us metaphors for expressing the human condition.

When I was a kid we used to go for these rides in the car for something to do on a hot summer night. And I know that that's part of the reason why I'm a landscape painter. When we're driving home in the evening from work or when I'm just out driving home to see my parents or something, just something wakes up in me when I'm out and seeing that kind of light—that evening light—and my work's about all of those things.

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Process

I often don't have a clear picture in my mind of what the image is going to be. It sort of evolves. I may have an idea about a certain kind of field that I'm looking into, or a sky, but it's always kind of like opening a present in a way, when I finally realize that the piece is finished, or this is the best I can do. It's finished. And I'm often surprised at what came to pass, because while I'm working I'm not always conscious of every single move I make. I'm not in control. There are other things at work—I don't know what they are—that sort of guide me.

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Advice to new artists

Do your work. Try not to take things too personally. Listen, take what's nourishing, and let the rest roll off—because not everything that's said to you will really be about you, at all. Be as open to possibility as you can.

Everyone has ambivalence and everyone has good feelings about their life. But, I can't imagine not being an artist. It's been really very nourishing. I just can't picture any other vocation.

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