Biography of Susan Wester Perez
HER LIFE
A native of New York City, Susan and her family moved several times around the United States when she was a child. They lived in New York, New Jersey, Tennessee, and California before settling in to Newton, Massachusetts, where she spent her formative years.
An artist from a young age, Susan took every art class available to her up through high school. After graduating, she studied Design, Painting, and Literature at The University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and later at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.
Susan spent the late 1980s and early 90's in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, California., where she worked with a chain of art supply stores and galleries. The light of Los Angeles made her want to experiment more with color, and color remains her love language.
She met her partner Jerry in L.A. and soon they left California for the borderland of El Paso, Texas, where she now calls home. To live in El Paso is to be inspired by the culture, the food, and the unique landscape of her city. And the people are fantastic.
Susan has shown her work in El Paso and Las Cruces, N.M. Her work can be found at there local Galleries:
1. Art Soup Collective, 5024 Doniphan Dr. (west side)
2. El Paso's Finest, 314 N. Mesa (downtown)
3. Ysleta Mission Gift Shop, 131 S. Zaragosa (east side)
Please follow me on Instagram @susanwesterperez, there you can see what's currently dominating my head space, and also can check out new art shows and festivals I will be participating in.
HER PROCESS
Her process typically starts with a watercolor or pencil sketch onto paper, mapping out the thrust of the composition.
“I need to understand a subject before I feel ready to paint it.” Susan says, “And that can entail anything from consulting photos and making preliminary sketches, to surfing the net for research and context. Only when I understand it can I begin to paint it.”
Typically, her next step is a base layer. Using washes of color she maps out different planes and surfaces, letting that fully dry before moving on.
“There is a transformation that takes place when watercolor dries” she explains, ”patterns and textures appear in the paper, where color has settled into tiny pools on the paper. This makes some areas darker and richer while others are filled with light.” Susan takes cues from this natural process, and strives to incorporate them into the final composition whenever possible
Her color palette is filled with saturated colors and often opposite colors share edges, making them even stronger and more vibrant. She calls this technique “making the colors sing.”
Layering of colors is another feature of her work. The transparency of the water media can give a painting a stained-glass effect when dark colors are placed over light. However, Susan will also layer light colors over dark, breaking a cardinal rule of watercolor, when she wants her piece to have a strange glow.
When different textures and/or opacity are needed, other media may be added as the final touch to a piece, such as pastel, pencil, ink, acrylic and gesso.