By Karen Spotts
Our latest PSC Signature Member is Susan Mayfield. A native of South Carolina, Susan has lived in the small mountain town of Salida for the past 17 years.
As an art student at the College of Charleston, Susan was fascinated by the Southwest, particularly Colorado and New Mexico. In the summer of 1977, her father took her family on a cross-country trip to see a few national parks. Rocky Mountain National Park impressed her so much that she got a job waitressing the following summer in nearby Estes Park.
In college, Susan was a Printmaking major. She also worked in oil, and was introduced to pastels by her drawing professor. She began working in watercolor, adding pastel on top to add light. Eventually, the pastels became more interesting and her more dominant medium.
After college, Susan married, and raised a family near Charleston, and became active in the burgeoning Charleston art scene. She took workshops from notable pastel artists including Albert Handel and Doug Dawson. She also participated in workshops in the Taos, NM area, and fell in love with the southwest landscape as well as painting in “plein air”. Susan also began exhibiting her work at the Joyce Robins Gallery in Santa Fe.
After a divorce and life as a single mom, Susan met and married the “love of her life.” An adventurer and explorer, he also shared a love for the American West. They traveled together to Salida, and bought an old town house built in 1893. It became their summer home and for holidays until her kids went off to college, when they moved permanently to Colorado.
Traveling and exploring Colorado and the west, Susan had the opportunity to paint many wild, iconic places. She became an advocate of public lands, wishing to bring awareness of the importance of protecting and preserving these landscapes. As artists, she believes we have a “unique opportunity to bring awareness to the general public of the importance of preserving our most special places”…which she intends to do for the rest of her days.
Susan is known for her bold, colorful landscape pastels of the American southwest as well as her native South Carolina Lowcountry. She is represented in many galleries in South Carolina, New Mexico and Salida. She has participated and won awards in many plein air festivals, as well as many PSC show awards. Her work has been chosen for the Art in Embassies Program, and hangs in numerous corporate and private collections. Most recently, she was juried into the 2024 IAPS Juried Pastel World Open division. Susan currently teaches workshops and classes across the country, and in her studio in Salida.
More of Susan’s work can be seen on her website at: https://susanmayfield.net
