We recently connected with Suzi Long and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Suzi thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

In December 2020 and thru February 2021 I was caregiving a friend with serious cancer issues who lived in the Santa Cruz area. On my days off I would go to the river mouth or Natural Bridges State Park to absorb negative ions from the sea, and sketch (or doodle) rocks and birds and waves and the ocean.

While hanging at the shore I would see cattle egrets, or white herons with yellow feet darting around after sand dabs or other small tidbits to eat. The yellow feet made me think of yellow shoes, so I started drawing white birds with yellow high heels, then fishnet stockings and other colors of shoes, then different kinds of shoes, then different birds in all kinds of shoes, boots, sandals, slippers, and lots more.

As I drew and painted these small watercolors, a poem would surface about the bird or the shoes I had selected for a particular bird, and I would write it down next to the image. Now I have over 100 birds and poems and I made a book on Blurb but I need to get these images to a greater audience.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’ve always been creative. My folks didn’t understand that I needed art school and sent me off to secretarial school so I could “learn how to make a living for myself.” If only… well, that’s ancient history. I had a few executive secretarial positions in big companies, but after 12 years I moved to Honolulu to repair Xerox machines. Being the token woman didn’t sit too well with me and I learned how to hand-letter and became a sign painter, then a mural painter. Yes, I wish I’d started this Whimsy Walls path before I turned 31, but I garnered a lot of great press and had some fantastic jobs in some fabulous homes.

After 9/11 I married for the third time and moved to Oregon expecting to ease into my dotage painting pastels, but when that marriage failed, I moved to Mendocino where I was blessed with a community of my peers, people buying my paintings, and an incredible watertower where I resided and opened my own gallery. I started teaching “doodling” to visitors 4 days a week and would plaster small posters around town that in 12 years attracted over 1000 artist wannabe’s of all ages. One of the young students gave me my most proud moment several years later when she came into the gallery with a crowd of family members to tell me that she was on her way to Cal Poly to study architecture because of how I had inspired her ten years prior in my doodle class.

I badly broke my ankle near the end of 2017 and realized that it was time to reinvent myself yet again. In 2019 I found a small rv and moved aboard, stored some beloved pastels and other belongings, and hit the road hoping to inspire other students where I planned to find them like in rv parks and small towns. Covid was not my friend as far as meeting people and spreading art around, but I spent half a year traveling around and sending postcards back to Mendocino. Earned a new set of tires doing this!

As 2020 came to an end, I went to the Santa Cruz area to cook and care for a dear friend battling cancer. On my days off I would spend as much time as I could at the ocean painting small seascapes and enjoying the salt air and creatures of the beach. I watched countless white herons with yellow feet darting through the surf in search of sand dabs or other tasty tidbits, and I delighted in their yellow feet appearing to resemble yellow high heels. I started drawing them. Then I added fishnet stockings, and other styles of shoes. Then I put fuzzy slippers on a owl; painted loafers on a raven… and if all this wasn’t enough, I wrote a poem to go with each bird. Now this aviary holds over 100 different birds in all kinds of shoes, and as much as I’d like a larger audience, I seem to have stalled. Hit a wall. In the meantime, gas prices continue to climb so I’m hanging around my tribe.

I’ve taught a few short classes at the Mendocino Art Center and I continue to paint murals on the big water tanks around Fort Bragg and Mendocino. I’m a born mural painter and won a mural contest in 2017. That mural is on Highway 1 at the Northcoast Brewery on the Taproom. I’m quite proud of this. I’m also very happy to continue to paint in watercolor (I’ll get back into pastels if and when I have another home) and I really love painting the tank murals. The latest one is at the animal shelter and is a fund-raiser. Your favorite pet gets represented and the money is split between the shelter and me.

I travel to housesit; I consult on colors for interior decorating; I paint murals; I teach classes and have given workshops in Baja and in Mendocino, so I’m available to entertain small groups, usually up to 10! Art is my life.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

Since I’ve had to pivot so many times already and explained about that in the previous section, I’ll respond to a couple of the rewarding aspects that have affected me deeply.

I used to make my own Christmas cards, and going to visit a friend and seeing my card framed and hanging on the wall was my first memory of feeling rewarded. This happened to me at least 4 times!

Teaching is very rewarding when the student comes back to tell you how much they appreciate what you taught them. The process of teaching can demonstrate an “aha” moment, but after a year or 10 years, a visit from a student to express their gratitude to you provides immeasurable joy and validation. An elderly gent took my doodle class in Mendocino and a year or two after he and his wife stopped by my gallery. I asked to see his sketchbook and he had to go to the car to get it and his wife said to me, in his absence, “you have no idea how much you changed his life.” When he returned to show me his sketches, I was awed by the creativity, imagination, skill, and charm of the images he put in his sketchbook!

Being an artist connects one to a sub-culture of creativity and friendships that weren’t obvious starting out, and certainly not an inspiration to “become an artist.” The plein air painters are like a club. Your TRIBE! Your PEOPLE. Creative, talented people at every imaginable level come together without animosity or jealousy or anything but the joy of sharing their craft! Artists like other artists! No matter the medium used, it’s a special community.

Then there’s the feeling of winning. Once you have won BEST OF SHOW, you have a feeling of confidence that wasn’t there before. Your work was better than everyone else’s in that show. Wow. What a feeling! And I have compartmentalized that feeling so that I can call it up any time I’m feeling insecure, or less than fabulous… I ask myself what it felt like to win that BEST OF SHOW ribbon. I immediately stand taller, put on the inner smile (sometimes outer) and generally feel better about myself. It’s amazing. Transformative. Very rewarding.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I’ve had to reinvent myself several times. I’ve had the proverbial “rug” snatched from under me since I was in high school preparing to attend the Sorbonne in Paris and forced to detour to secretarial school.

I’ve mentioned a few other instances of my resilience, but I want to take a minute to share a personal story. I’m adopted and had learned that my maternal grandfather had been a mural painter and fine artist. I remember during several very high-end mural jobs in San Francisco being terrified that I would mess up, or not match a color or some other horror, and I would sit in the middle of the room I was about to paint, center myself, and ask my grandfather to please guide me to make the right choices. He always came through. I’m sad we never met, but I’m grateful I could connect with his spirit when I needed him.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.suzilong.com
• Facebook: [email protected]

Image Credits
Suzi Marquess Long