Paintings by Susan Bull Riley
In the Gallery at NBNC now through December 2021
Hours: Monday – Friday 9 am – 4 pm

This exhibit is a delightful mixture of moments in nature. A stroll through the gallery evokes the feeling of a summer walk through the Vermont countryside, with all that one encounters along the way. You’ll meet pitcher plants, apple trees, waxwings, and owls between sweeping views of the Worcester Range and quiet moments along a shady creek. These paintings reflect my desire to translate the intensity of my feelings for the natural world into images that speak to others.

About Susan Bull Riley

Sometimes it’s easier to use watercolors to communicate what I need to say, and sometimes oils work better. I am still trying to decide if I prefer one medium over the other, but at least it’s clear that for most of the subject matter in this exhibit, watercolor is my preferred medium because of the ease of rendering detail and its capacity for both translucency and opacity. However, I know myself! After this spell of watercolors and tiny brushes, my appetite for using big brushes and painting landscapes in wide swathes of juicy oil paint will reassert itself and I’ll leave the delicate watercolor brushes for a while.

 To paraphrase Anais Nin’s words: but substituting “paint” for “write”:

“I paint to heighten my own awareness of life. I paint to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection. I paint… to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. I paint to be able to transcend my life, to reach beyond it.”

I don’t seek out my subject matter; it comes to me. Relentlessly. From the exquisite delicacy of a feather to a landscape that leads the eye miles across Vermont’s hills, our world is breathtaking. Light, the ultimate designer, amplifies the beauty of everything I see, and offers inspiration wherever I turn.

My academic training was entirely in music performance and education rather than art, but that which was most private and meaningful — drawing and painting on my own since early childhood— became my primary professional life 25 years ago and I have never looked back.

I live and work in a renovated schoolhouse with my husband, the musician Richard Riley. It is a source of pleasure that our two grown daughters and their children share our feelings about the natural world we live in.

Visit Susan’s website: https://www.susanbullriley.com/