Suzanne Truman was born In Phoenix, Arizona; raised on farms and ranches in Arizona and California until her Family moved to Kentucky when she was 15. She returned west after attending a year at The University of Kentucky. She worked in Yellowstone National Park and lived in Hawaii for three years before migrating to the Rocky Mountains to finish her art degree in Bozeman. From there Suzanne moved to Missoula, Montana to complete her MFA, in painting. After graduate school she taught backcountry field courses in Alaska and along the Rio Grande and Big Bend National Park for two years. She went on to teach painting and drawing at The University of Montana-Western and Montana State University for the next seven years. Presently, Suzanne lives with her husband and their cat in Bozeman, Montana. The open west, and a sense of place, continue to strongly influence her paintings.Nature offers a myriad of sensations and awakens a sense of discovery when one is "exploring" their surroundings . Colors and textures inspire a lyrical essence of story. Engaging my senses and becoming absorbed in my surroundings elicits a sense of wonder. Robin's egg blue sky, indigo nights, aqua seas, red rock canyons; vermilion, azure, sienna, and viridian patinas of lichen covered rocks - These visual and emotional experiences inform my paintings. Thus, the exterior landscape fuels my interior landscape (psyche, mind's eye, soul). While painting, I strive to use the elements of an additive and subtractive process in a harmonious way, to evoke a metaphorical aspect of my natural surroundings. As the surface evolves, I sand, scrape and scratch back into the multi-painted layers. By intuitively responding to emerging images I feel that I am both weaving and unraveling a "story". I seek to reveal this "discovery" through each finished painting. (When complete, I hope to have images that look as if they're found objects. That is why I conceal my brush strokes). For myself, these paintings function as a tiny aspect of the wonder felt in "The Land" that cannot be explicitly (realistically) represented. In turn, I hope these abstract images stir the "interior landscape" of each viewer to inspire their own sense of discovery.