Susan Dietrich Gring

For most of my life I have gravitated to art exhibitions and museums believing that the creation of beautiful art (and music) is truly within the spiritual realm and a necessary element in fully embracing the beauty and joy of this world and its people.

Trained as a nurse, later as a hospital and long term care administrator, I happily spent much of my career within the healthcare arena. Professional interests in combination with raising a beautiful family with my husband, initially left little time to pursue my love of art. Instead, I nurtured my passion for creativity, color, and textures by immersing myself in nature and more specifically, gardening; the pleasure it brings is truly indescribable.  Talk about finding spiritual oneness while digging in the dirt!

After leaving the health care profession, I enrolled in art classes, finding excitement and challenge in acrylic painting classes and joy and inspiration in my new community of artists. And while I always thought I possessed a keen appreciation for the colors and shapes within nature, painting has truly sharpened an acuity where I daily delight in the color of the light on the trees and in the sky and water, the flickering shadows and silhouettes playing across the landscape and the majestic clouds floating in the sky.  Gardening combined with a general love of the great outdoors perhaps explains why I am drawn to landscape painting.

Today, my favorite paintings are inspired by my life with my beloved husband and family, our gardens, and our travel across picturesque terrain.  Indeed, my life is my canvas, and the brush, my expression.  And oh, what infinite joy to paint, to create, to live!