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Susan Fox
Susan Fox feels very strongly that "The planet belongs to all of us together. If there are no good places for the animals, then ultimately there will be no good places for us either. We are just barely beginning to comprehend how interconnected and mutually dependent our world is. One of my fondest hopes for the future is that we, as a species, will finally grow up and learn to share."She currently supports (Director of Conservation Biology for the Denver Zoological Foundation) Dr. Richard Reading's work in Mongolia. His current projects include studies of argali sheep (the world's largest mountain sheep), cinereous vultures (the world's largest vulture) and the wild bactrian camel (restricted to few areas of the Gobi Desert). Susan donates a percentage of her sales of paintings with Mongolian wildlife subject matter to him and also to Jed Murdoch, a doctoral student, who is doing first time research on the small carnivores of Mongolia, including Pallas' cat, badger, corsac fox and red fox. Susan had the good fortune to grow up on the Redwood Coast of California, about five hours north of San Francisco. She started her career as a sign painter's apprentice in 1976 at age 22, also getting on-the-job training as a graphic designer. For the next ten years, she freelanced as a graphic designer and sign painter for a wide variety of clients in northern California. She went back to school in 1987 at age 35 and received her BFA Illustration from the Academy of Art College(now University) in San Francisco, California in 1989. Upon moving back home to Humboldt County, Susan studied traditional oil painting with a local instructor while she continued with her illustration and design business and, for an interesting year, her own art gallery. By the late 90's, she was painting in oil full-time and had decided that the natural world was her chosen subject.She has studied with well-known artists such as John Seerey-Lester, Paco Young, John Banovich, Jim Wilcox and Scott Christensen. In October of 2004, Susan went on a 16-day artist's workshop/safari in Kenya with Simon Combes and nine other fortunate artists. Susan counts Carl Rungius, Maurice Braun, Edgar Payne, Bob Kuhn and Scott Christensen among her major influences. She has always been more interested in developing a personal, painterly manner of interpreting her subjects than in a literal representation.In 2003, Susan's painting, "Breaktime" was chosen for the Arts for the Parks Top 100. In 2006, "Hayden Valley Thunder" was chosen for Art and the Animal Kingdom XI at the Bennington Center for the Arts. "Gobi Roundup" and "Takhi Stallion and Mare" were accepted for Art and the Animal Kingdom XII.Susan loves to travel and she and her sketchbook have been to Kenya, Mongolia, Portugal, England, France, Germany, Canada, Japan and many states in the US.She has found during her field work that when one takes the time to sit and seriously watch animals, as opposed to only seeing them and then going on, they inevitably reveal little insights into their lives which are totally separate from any relationship, or perceived value, to us. The chance to record those moments on canvas is one of the things that gets her creative juices flowing. She always tries to to depict a specific individual, not just a generic representation of the species.
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