Susanne Lamoureux ,BA., BEd., nominated for excellence in teaching and graduated with distinction, left her previous profession to dedicate herself to study art. With the tutelage of Frank Haddock, she studied drawing and painting and pursued an art career. Susanne has won several awards but most notably in 2007, she achieved the distinction of winning the national Staedtler Canada Drawing contest for “Sunday Morning Sunbeams”.
Mastering the skills in drawing, composing, and painting is a life long quest. With its challenges and rewards, Susanne is committed to improving and refining her skills on a daily basis. Her passion for learning and growing steers her to professionally develop through courses/workshops on a yearly basis. She applies what she learns in her artwork and enjoys seeing her progress unfold and take shape at a different level.
As life has breathed colour and light into this world, Susanne’s reverence for beauty and its gifts to us, compel Susanne encapsulate it with emotion. She believes each subject, whether she paints a person, animal, still life, or landscape, has its unique reason for its presence and she is motivated to portray the beauty and gifts life offers us. In addition, her love for her own cat and her compassion for the homeless ones, has inspired Susanne to embark on the challenge of creating feline art pieces that reveal the gracefulness and charm cats have. She is also a supporter of the Hervey Foundation For Cats. (www.herveycats.com) Susanne offers workshops most seasons to support the foundation.
With Susanne’s coloured pencils, she is largely self taught and enjoys developing her own techniques and colour solutions. Susanne’s approach is meticulous, applying colour in multiple layers until she is satisfied with the depth and richness of the colour which takes several months to complete. Sometimes when Susanne considers a work completed, the viewing public find it difficult to believe that the work was accomplished using colour pencils.
The majority of Susanne’s paintings are done from life rather than photos. This allows her to see and experience the richness of colours that permeate our world. Her goal is to see the elegance and beauty in everyday life and use colours to depict the gifts life offers us.
Susanne uses her skills to teach drawing, painting, and coloured pencils at the Artra Art School in Edmonton. Many of her students are award winners and most recent, three of her students became the only Canadians to win in an international art competition using Derwent pencils.