Matzke Fine Art and Design

Susan Cohen Thompson

Susan was born in New York City and spent her childhood in New York where her perceptions of art and nature developed in city museums. Art became her way to visualize the natural world. After earning a BFA in Ohio, Susan worked as a fine artist in the Boston area until moving to Camano Island in 2003. Her connection with nature was enhanced by journeys deep into the Amazon Rain Forest where her interest in indigenous Earth wisdom became a focus of her vision of the world. Old growth forests of the Pacific Northwest opened the visual dialog at the root of Susan’s image making. The cosmological aspect of her recent work grew out of her broadening ideas about the inner luminosity of nature, a global perspective and the relationship of the Earth with the cosmos.

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Since moving to the Northwest, her art has been internationally published in books, on book covers and in articles on Earth wisdom. Most notably, she illustrated “Speaking with Nature, Awakening to the Deep Wisdom of the Earth” by two well known shamanic teachers. The Lightcatcher Museum, Arts Alive Invitational, Anacortes Arts Juried Exhibitions, Schack Art Center are among the regional venues that have featured Susan’s work. Susan has shown her paintings, ceramics and drawings at Matzke Fine Art Gallery as long as she has lived on Camano.

Below are new ceramic pieces, all black frames.

“Through interactions with forests, learning from indigenous peoples and studying cosmology, I have come to perceive that everything on the Earth is a manifestation of Earth and its interplay with cosmic forces. I believe everything is interconnected and sentient. These ideas have been a central part of my art for over twenty years.

Art is my medium for pondering the universe and my way of responding to the world. It is a delight to communicate my ideas by putting color on a surface and forming it into meaning. I love moving the paint and making lines.”