Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Susan R. Kirshenbaum. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Susan R., thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

Raised in an art centric family, I was encouraged to be an artist from my earliest memories. At five my parents started an art school and brought me and my siblings to work, allowing us to study art with young adults, and eventually completing a degree there. I was given full access to art supplies and equipment (35mm camera, darkroom, painting studio, and more). They also gave me my first travel experiences – including a 3 week family art tour of Europe that started me off on an art and travel path that I continue to enjoy to this day.

Susan R., love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Most of the art I’m making now originates with my iPad Pro and Apple Pencil as my primary art tools. I start with a digital canvas that I paint or collage and I work from a life model. My style is graphic, sensual, and fluid. I create gestural drawings or paintings that convey a frankness and which feel intimate and natural, featuring powerful women. The women (and occasional men) come across as strong, decisive, confident, and unique individuals – this is my underlying narrative. In my digital collages I incorporate my photos – and I shoot what I see around me: nature – a field of flowers, clouds, trees; San Francisco landmarks and architecture – bridges, signs, the sides of buildings, sidewalks, and my travels. I also incorporate my abstract digital paintings. I edit my work vigorously, creating multiple iterations to select just a few pieces that are beautiful, rich in form, color, and content, and convey our everyday humanity. Ideally my works helps motivate people to embrace their human-ness. I like to stimulate a response. I want people to overcome discomfort about nudity. It’s important to me to show who we are and to fight to remain uncensored. I want my viewers to be stirred. My subjects are naked but are completely comfortable in their skins. Are you? Do you want to be? There should be something liberating in seeing my work. Blunt. Nudity is not an issue. Body love is.
Since I love luscious color I am stimulated by well-designed and produced decorative arts, fashion, textiles, still and moving images, architecture, and the performing arts. I love to photograph patterns, shapes, color combinations, light, and shadow. Living in the Bay Area feeds my soul. Traveling opens my eyes and kindles my imagination. Working for 30+ years as a creative director, project and production manager led me to collaborating with a vast array of talented artists, writers, designers, and photographers. All of these work and life experiences have helped me develop into the artist and curator I am today, with a clear view of my own skills and interests.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I want people to overcome discomfort about nudity – as long as a nude female body remains controversial. It’s important to me to show who we are and to fight to remain uncensored. My subjects are naked but are completely comfortable in their skins. Are you? Do you want to be? There should be something liberating in seeing my work. Nudity is not an issue. Body love is – feeling the presence of strong women. And for people to become visible – to see and to hear each other and to be seen and heard – no matter what gender, age, race, economic strata, anywhere and everywhere in the world.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

Doing what I want to do every day has always been of utmost importance to me, no matter what the job or the activity happens to be. I love to love the people I work with, to get inspiration from whatever environment I’m in, to travel with the eyes of an artist is to notice what’s around me. It can be such a pleasure to collaborate with other talented people. What could be more rewarding than living a life in a creative environment, planning and executing unique projects, curating art and making art, reading, writing, editing, photographing, seeing art (in museums and galleries, art studios, and the visuals you experience while traveling), as well as observing nature, and interacting with people (people watching and life drawing)? It’s lovely to have my work is selected, exhibited, appreciated, and purchased, but it’s not the most important part of my life as an artist. I also have a wonderful community of friends and family, where we support one another.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Www.cherrypits.net
• Instagram: Srkirshenbaum
• Facebook: Cherry Pits Art
• Linkedin: Susan R.Kirshenbaum
• Youtube: Susan R. Kirshenbaum
• Other: ALL: https://linktr.ee/SusanRKirshenbaum

  Including Susan R. Kirshenbaum: Patreon, RedBubble, LinkedIn, YouTube

  And this is my Art Collective:
  https://theinvisibilitycollective.com