Susan Abbott was born in Takoma Park, Maryland and grew up in this Victorian suburb of Washington, DC. Because her father was an artist and graphic designer, there were many art books and supplies at home and Abbott was drawing and painting from an early age. Her mother was a skilled seamstress and taught her to sew, knit and embroider. These hand crafts and time outdoors exploring the creeks and woods in her neighborhood were favorite childhood activities that have informed her work as an artist.
Abbott graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BFA in painting from the Maryland Institute, College of Art, and went on to receive an MFA from the Institute’s Hoffberger School of Painting, with the renowned abstract expressionist artist Grace Hartigan and realist master Israel Hershberg as her advisors. She’s been working as a professional artist since that time, exhibiting her oils and watercolors in galleries and museums around the country, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Contemporary Art Center of Virginia, Museum of Technology, Hood College, and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Her commissions, including a biographical still life for Oprah Winfrey featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show, are in many corporate and private collections. She has been a recipient of Maryland Art Council Individual Artist Awards and Vermont Arts Council Creation Grants.
Articles and reviews about Susan Abbott’s paintings have appeared in the Washington Post, Baltimore Sun, Washingtonian Magazine, Museum and Arts Magazine, Art New England, American Artist Magazine, Vermont Magazine, Watercolor Artist, and Watercolor USA. She writes a regular column on creativity for The Artist’s Magazine. The art critic for the Washington Post commented on Abbott’s watercolor paintings, “There simply aren’t many…in America who can match her level of expertise. What makes her painting so interesting, however, is the tension between the dazzling display of skill and the underlying idea.”
In addition to her active career as an exhibiting painter and writer on art, Susan Abbott teaches painting workshops in Italy, France, India, Canada, the Bahamas, and locations around the United States. She lives in Northern Vermont.
