Susan Sydney

Susan Sydney was born and raised in Toronto, Ontario. She has always wanted to live in the country and in 1978 she and her husband, Ron purchased a farm in Smith Township.

After major renovations to the house and the barns together with adding a quarter mile track and fixing many of the fences for paddocks and pasture, they were able to move in 1979.


She is primarily a self-taught artist but Susan firmly believes that an artist can never stop learning and often attends workshops and enjoys seeing the techniques used by other artists in the creation of their own original art work. She has taken classes in a variety of painting media with various accomplished Canadian, American and European artists.

"I am inspired by the beauty that surrounds me; which so often goes unnoticed or is taken for granted. I see paintings everywhere I look, whether it is walking through the fields, driving through the countryside, out on the lake, or diving in the depths of the ocean. I would like the viewer to experience the sensations and feelings that made the subject of my paintings appealing to me."

She has always been interested in drawing and painting and started as soon as she could hold a crayon and put it to paper or on a wall.

Her mother, Inge was a landscape artist in acrylic and watercolour, who encouraged Susan to develop her talents allowing her to paint two wall murals on her bedroom walls when she was 12 years old. One was of the murals was a dragon the other was of horses.

Susan has been creating realistic paintings of horses, animals, children, the beauty of nature and scenes from everyday farm life which have been favourite subjects of her paintings for more than thirty five years.

Once she began diving over ten years ago her paintings have included the fish, the reefs and underwater wrecks she has explored. More recently she has become interested in Life Drawing and has started painting Abstract and enjoys playing with colours, textures and shapes.

While her favourite medium is transparent watercolour because of the many interesting ways in which is can be used, from the soft textures and pastel shades to the bold colours and tight detail.

She also uses a wide variety of media to help her attain the effect she requires in her paintings including acrylic, charcoal, conte, pen and ink, pencil (graphite and Prisma) and pastel. Susan is constantly trying different styles and experimenting with the various media to find their full range.


For seven years Susan owned and operated Fourwinds Art Gallery in Selwyn, Ontario. It was there she taught watercolour and drawing classes and is proud that many of her students have continued to develop their artistic talents and are becoming recognized in their own right.

Exhibitions:
Susan's paintings have been shown in over 350 Solo and Group Shows, in private and public galleries and she has participated in numerous Juried Exhibitions in Canada.

Memberships:
• 1988-1997 and 2004-present – Buckhorn Artists’ Group
  (founding member)
• 2007-present – Kawartha Artists’ Gallery and Studio
  (five years as an active member of the Executive in the position of Treasurer)
  (three years;as Group Leader for the Still Life Class)
• 2008-present – Outdoor Painters’ Group
• 2010 and 2012-present– Lindsay Art Gallery
• 2011-present - Creative Arts Guild
• 2013-present - Art on Kent

Collections:
Her originals can be found in both private and corporate collections on six of the seven Continents, (Antarctica being the missing continent so far) spanning 27 countries with the majority of her paintings throughout United States and Canada.

Susan’s art work has appeared on the covers of Horse Sense and Horse Talk magazines and the Ontario Pinto Horse News.

She was a featured author in Horse Talk magazine for her 'How to Draw Horses' column from 1994-2004.

Her black and white illustrations have appeared in The Pinto Horse and in a number of Ontario newspapers.

She designed the logo for the Ontario Pinto Horse Association and the pin representing the Canadian Limousin Association in Limoges, France for the 100th Anniversary of Limousin breeding.