Inaugural Invitational Advisory Council | Susan paterson

Susan Paterson is a Canadian realist painter and printmaker  best known for her detailed oil still lifes grounded in exacting observation and disciplined draftsmanship. Her arrangements often bring together silver, glass, lace, flowers, and food, requiring exceptional control of form, texture, reflection, and the shifting effects of light. She is especially drawn to antique silver, whose curved surfaces disclose the studio, light source, and surrounding environment, creating what she has described as another world within the object. Her limited-palette paintings of silver and pale textiles are particularly demanding demonstrations of tonal judgment and technical precision.

Although still life is central to Paterson’s oil practice, her broader body of paintings includes florals, landscapes, and interiors. Her landscape etchings—printed from copper plates and individually hand-colored in watercolor—form an important parallel body of work, translating the quiet terrain of Atlantic Canada through delicate line, tonal variation, restrained color, texture, and atmospheric distance.

Paterson earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Mount Allison University and pursued further study in England, studied lithography and etching at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and trained at the Academy of Realist Art.

With support from a Nova Scotia Arts Council Professional Development Grant, Paterson also studied at Grand Central Atelier in New York. Her studies and practice have been supported by an Elizabeth Greenshields Grant, residencies, and scholarships. Over a career spanning more than four decades, she has presented more than thirty solo exhibitions. Paterson’s honors include Purchase Awards in the 15th and 16th Art Renewal Center Salons, Second Place in Still Life in both the 14th and 16th Salons, and repeated recognition in International Artist magazine competitions, culminating in the Grand Prize in Challenge No. 138, Still Life. Her command of observation, draftsmanship, material illusion, and light gives her broad authority in evaluating technically rigorous representational work across both painting and works on paper, with particular expertise in still life.