ABOUT THE ARTIST
Susan Fehlinger had to be content to be an occasional painter during her 30-year career with an ad agency in New York City, producing commercials for television. “I used to relish the week I took each year to attend painting workshops in New Hampshire—my annual escape from the pressures of my work. Having the time to paint was a gift and the hours melted away,” she recalls. Susan attended a few night classes at The School of Visual Arts in New York, and workshops on the Cape, but for the most part she is a self-taught artist.
In 1997 she quit the advertising business, bought The Village Inn, a bed and breakfast on Cape Cod, and moved to Sandwich with her ten year old son. Inspired by her times in New Hampshire, she created Sandwich Artworks Ltd.—a series of painting, drawing and printmaking workshops taught by 10 different Cape Cod artists. “I wanted to create a haven where people could come to the Cape, relax and paint—escape the demands of their lives and renew their spirit. Of course, in the back of my mind I thought I could do the same, but that doesn’t happen when you’re running the bed and breakfast and the art workshops at the same time.”
The B&B proved to be a 24/7 enterprise that left Susan very little time to pursue her art, so she sold the bed and breakfast in 2001, took some computer courses to update her skills, and bought the SummerGuide, a Cape Cod guidebook that she now publishes annually. “Now I can use what I learned in advertising while having my own business—I was always a frustrated art director.”
After the death of her mother Elli in July 2003, Susan found a painting at her mother’s house of a tomato that she had done in her 20s. “My mother was also an artist and somehow with her passing I felt the need to paint again, to keep that spirit going. I remembered the great pleasure of just sitting in her kitchen and painting that red tomato.” That year Susan resumed painting in earnest—tomatoes, then peppers, apples, oranges, grapes, pears, lemons and peaches. “It was a great starting point. I love playing with color, with shapes and shadows and the freedom of working on large canvases with oil paint and a palette knife—I don’t even have to wash out the brush!”
That series of “Fresh Produce” represented the first body of work from this emerging artist. She has since branched out and she’s taking new directions as a painter – so far encompassing landscapes, barns, marshes and coastal scenes, while broadening her color palette and deepening her already formidable texture.