Susan Mayfield is an award-winning artist known for her use of color and light in her pastel and oil paintings. She was raised in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, a watery landscape dominated by rivers, creeks and marshes, where she lived until moving to Salida in 2007. Mayfield now divides her time between the high mountain desert and big open skies of Colorado, and the semi-tropical coastline of South Carolina, and finds inspiration in the dynamic contrasts between these two places.
After graduating with honors and receiving the Outstanding Fine Arts Student Award from the College of Charleston, Mayfield continued her studies with prominent artists from around the country and started teaching workshops and classes which she continues today. Her career has included solo and group exhibits in galleries such as the Wells Gallery and the Gibbes Museum in Charleston, South Carolina, the Joyce Robins Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico, The Red Piano Gallery in Hilton Head, City Art Gallery in Greenville, N.C., among many others. Her paintings have been chosen for the Art in Embassies Program, and her work is included in many corporate and private collections. She, along with artist Stephen Smalzel, opened up the Smalzel Mayfield Art Gallery in 2012 in Salida. She participates in plein air events around the country, and in 2015 she won the Best In Show award at the South Park Plein Air Festival, and in 2016 and 2017 she won the People’s Choice and Quick Draw competition there. In 2017 she won a People’s Choice and Quick Draw award at Red Rocks Arts Festival in Moab, Utah.
Other recent awards include the 2017 Elizabeth Mowry Award for Poetic Landscape at the Mile High National Pastel Exhibition in Denver and a 2017 Sponsorship Award from the Arizona Pastel Society National Show in Sedona. In 2017 she was honored to judge the Art League of Hilton Head’s Biennale National Exhibit, and now serves on that Art League’s Advisory Board for their Visual Arts of the Lowcountry Program. Her paintings can currently be seen at the Sandpiper Gallery on Sullivans Island, S.C., the Edward Dare Gallery in Charleston, S.C., and at the Palace Hotel Gallery in Salida. Mayfield explores and interprets the landscape in whatever locale she finds herself. Recently her work has focused on the amazing wild places in and around the Southwest with particular emphasis on the canyons and the rivers that carved them. Mayfield is inspired by her time spent hiking, camping, and exploring the great outdoors in Colorado and all throughout the Southwest with her partner in life and husband, Lee Hunnicutt. She served as a board member of Friends of Browns Canyon during the time Browns Canyon was designated as a National Monument, and is an active proponent and enthusiastic fan of public lands. She hopes to bring awareness to the need to preserve and protect our public lands, so that future generations will be able to wander, explore, and draw inspiration from these wild places as she does now.
www.susanmayfield.net, www.susanmayfield.blogspot.com
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