Susan Duplan - Bio
Susan Duplan – Pender Island Artist
Article From Avid Magazine, October 2009 issue
Click here for full article
Canadian Artist Susan Duplan loves being near panoramic coastlines. This fascination with the meeting place of land and sea compels her to paint the Gulf Islands in British Columbia and in the past The Great Lakes & the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica.
Susan has been working as a professional artist since her early twenties. After graduating from The University of Western Ontario Visual Arts Program in 1977 she launched her own Art School in London, Ontario. Teaching students as young as three years old to her oldest student of 93 her philosophy has been that:
"The Arts offers us the opportunity to explore the essence of our world and through this journey we can transform ourselves.”
Some of Susan’s students have been quite challenged physically, emotionally and psychologically. Many young children with learning disabilities found confidence in themselves by excelling in art in Susan’s classes. One of her students, a mouth painter, has gone on to excel internationally. Other students have become architects or art teachers and artists themselves.
“The power of an individual’s imagination and learning to trust one’s imagination in the creative context and in one’s life has always been foremost in my mind when teaching as well as doing my own art. The skills and application of making art is then focused upon.”
Outside of her own studio classes Susan also taught Art at; Continuing Education at Fanshawe College, London Ontario, The London Regional Art & Historical Museum and she traveled with a group of her students to Paris France where they worked from the Masters’ paintings at the Louvre and the Rodin Museum.
“As well as working in private and public galleries it is safe to say that I have been immersed in Canadian art in its many facets for the past 35 years.”
"In terms of my own work, I am extremely fascinated in energies, seen and unseen and communicating their existence. As in the North American Native belief, everything has an essence, a spirit, and we are all related. By viewing and feeling our world and beyond in this way we are not only more respectful of our place on the planet but it offers up a very magical existence. And of course, this is where the imagination comes into play. The Western world often views the imagination as just creative and sometimes frivolous. However, the imagination is a very powerful human tool for receiving and perceiving the nuances available to us for a more heightened human experience.”
“ My goal in my art on Pender is to communicate the very powerful energies found here in this colourful, mysterious and magical place.”
www.susanduplan.com
Susan Duplan is represented by the Canada Council Art Bank, Circle Arts Gallery, Tobermory Ontario Look for her One Woman July 2010 Exhibition at Morning Bay Winery, Pender Island, BC
