Susan Coppage Parker
After painting seriously, but briefly, during college, I returned to art in 1998. It is now my primary activity, apart from the demands of daily living. (A career in social services and court administration intervened, leaving little time for art during my “middle period.”) I work in watercolor, oil and pastel, using the medium that best suits my mood and the subject.
I have studied watercolor techniques with Irene Sylvester, artist-in-residence at Montpelier Arts Center (Laurel, Maryland), Frank Webb (AWS), Lynn Ferris (NWS), Kent Roberts, and Fritz Briggs (AWS). I studied classical oil painting for two years with Michael Davis, and study on an ongoing basis with David Buckley Good. The latter three artists are instructors or have been trained at the venerable Schuler School of Fine Art in Baltimore, MD.
As an artist, my goal is to focus attention, if only briefly, on the beauty (and quirkiness) in the things around us that often escape our notice as we rush about our daily lives.
I regularly exhibit at Hagerstown, MD’s Valley Art Association Mansion House, the Firehouse Gallery (formerly the Washington Street Artists’ Co-op) in Charles Town WV, the Potomac River Artists’ Guild, the Berkeley Arts Council’s “Art Works” Gallery (Martinsburg, WV). My work has been accepted in juried shows at the Washington County (MD) Museum of Fine Arts, the Washington County Arts Council, the Delaplaine Art Center (Frederick, MD), Art at the Mill (Berryville, VA,) and the Ice House and Art in the Park in Berkeley Springs, WV. I also served 11 years on the Board of Trustees of the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, and participated in the planning and development of the Hagerstown City Cultural Trail which opened in the fall of 2016.
