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Susan Abbott graduated Summa Cum Laude with an BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute, College of Art and received a MFA from the Institute’s Hoffberger School of Painting with Grace Hartigan as her advisor. She went on to study printmaking in the graduate program at the University of Iowa under Professor Mauricio Lasansky.
Susan Abbott has been working as a professional artist since that time, exhibiting frequently in galleries around the country. Her work has been featured at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Museum of Technology, Hood College, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Her painting was featured in the show “Objects of Personal Significance”, which toured museums around the United States. She has had numerous one person shows of her large-scale watercolor and oil still life paintings and plein air landscape. She has been a recipient of a Maryland Art Council “Individual Artist Award” and a Vermont Arts Council “Creation Grant”. Susan Abbott’s paintings are in many private and corporate collections, including Mead Data Central, the Gund Company, the Federal Home Mortgage Administration, Peat Marwick, and Chittenden Bank. Her commission for Oprah Winfrey was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Articles and reviews about Susan Abbott’s paintings have appeared in the Washington Post, Washington Times, the Baltimore Sun, Washingtonian Magazine, Museum and Arts Magazine, American Artist Magazine and Watercolor USA. The art critic for the Washington Post commented about Susan Abbott’s painting, “There simply aren’t many watercolorists in America who can match her level of expertise. What makes her painting so interesting, however, is the peculiar tension between the dazzling display of skill and the underlying idea.” Gerrit Henry wrote in a catalogue essay, “Each of her sublimely everyday epics is executed on a gargantuan scale...these paintings have a grave and gracious contemporary import.” Sarah Ban Breathnach, in her best-selling book “Simple Abundance” wrote, “Susan Abbott is an extraordinary artist who creates panoramic watercolors that are breathtaking in their exquisite detail. Like a brilliant photographer, her still arrangements seize a moment in time to dazzling effect.” In addition to her career as an exhibiting painter, Ms. Abbott conducts art workshops nationally and in Europe. She travels frequently to find source material for her still life, and has painted and taught in India, Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Mexico and Costa Rica. She lives in northern Vermont. |
