About Susan

I have been painting for 15 years and have studied under four very talented artists.

They are Aline Ordman, Carole Watanabe, Suzanne Edminster and Susan Stover. I mostly paint with oil but work in acrylic and encaustic mediums and styles from realism to the abstract and impressionism.

My latest passion is plein air painting. I have traveled to many beautiful places in Europe and the United States to capture landscapes on canvas and have attended three plein air conventions which are organized by Plein Air Magazine https://www.pleinairconvention.com. It was at the San Francisco convention in 2019 that I attended a lecture by John Phototschnik and discovered his technique of painting with three primary colors plus white and his book “Limited Palette Unlimited Color”. I bought his book in which he describes forty six color combinations that one can use as their palette. I have tried over thirty of his combinations and really learned how to mix color and how to get the color you want.

I am a member of AWS, Art Workshop of Western Sonoma County https://www.awsomeart.org here in Sebastopol, CA and was thrilled to win third place in acrylic medium in the 2019 Apple Blossom Art Show. This year 2023 I won first place in acrylic medium and third place in oil medium. I am also an exhibitor in the ArtAtTheSource open studio weekends the first two weekends of June organized by the Sebastopol Center for the Arts, https://www.sebarts.org. This year 2023 will be the third year I have participated in this event.

I teach art classes at the Sebastopol Center for the Arts. My classes are Color Mixing and Ten Strokes and Color Mixing and Still Life. My students can either paint with acrylics or oils. We start with the primary colors and mix several shades of those and then mix the secondary colors, orange, violet and green and mix various shades of those. We try and paint a piece of fruit or vegetable with ten strokes of paint. In the still life class we paint each item in the still life with ten strokes of paint. You can sign up for classes at https://www.sebarts.org/classes.

Before I discovered my love of painting I designed and made high-end sheepskin coats, jackets, vests and hats, retailing them through American Craft Council Shows and other juried craft shows on the east coast and upper midwest. I also sold to many stores and galleries. https://susanbradfordsheepskin.com.

I owned and operated Susan Bradford Gallery, Bradford, Vermont for fourteen years, 2000-2014. Besides sheepskin coats and hats and paintings I sold jewelry, wood, ceramics and glass from nationally recognized artists.