Susan Dietrich Gring
Ph: 540.521.3031 (c) or 571.367.4580 (h); E-mail: sgring@roanoke.edu
For most of my life I have gravitated to art exhibitions and museums believing that the creation of beautiful art is truly within the spiritual realm and a necessary element in fully embracing the beauty and joy of this world and its people.
Educated as a nurse, later as a healthcare administrator and health foundation executive, I spent my career in healthcare. Professional interests in combination with raising a family initially left little time to pursue my love of art. Instead, I nurtured my passion for creativity, color, and textures by immersing myself in nature and more specifically, gardening.
After leaving the health care profession, I enrolled in art classes, finding excitement and challenge in acrylic painting classes and joy and inspiration in my community of artists. And while I always thought I possessed a keen appreciation for the colors and shapes within nature, painting has truly sharpened an acuity where I daily delight in the color of the light on the trees and in the sky and water, the flickering shadows and silhouettes playing across the landscape and the majestic clouds floating in the sky. Gardening combined with a love of the great outdoors perhaps explains why I am drawn to landscape painting.
Today, my favorite paintings are inspired by my life with my family, gardens, and travel across picturesque terrain. It is with gratitude that I greet each day, to wet my brushes, to paint, to live.
