For decades, Singleton’s large-scale works have been sought out by the region’s architects, private collectors around the world, and commercial interior designers. Her Ziggurats and other works of art have been included in Smithsonian Institute artist collaborations, and graced the lobbies and walls of some of the most prestigious hotels, museums, galleries, and private residences around the world.
For much of her work, her inspiration springs from the natural world with its intricate simplicity, balance, textures, scale and light. Using handmade papers and paint, she builds her artwork as layered architectural surfaces, each piece a unique portal recording time, light and air. Click
HERE to view a recent artist talk with Susan.
After working for years out of her Capitol Hill Seattle studio, Singleton now creates out of her studio at Grindstone Harbor on remote Orcas Island.
Susan Singleton Bio
Susan Singleton grew up hiking, swimming, skiing and exploring the
outdoors. This shaped a deep connection to the natural world. Her curiosity
about how things are made, and how materials come together, led her to
work with her hands as a child— drawing, painting, molding mud and clay,
sewing and building.
Her father was a scientist in the space program,
instilling a particular way of approaching the world with curiosity. The
family enthusiastically explored Washington State.
She began studies at the University of Washington in 1966 as a science
major.
However, a required art class changed her course completely.
Drawn to the expressive possibilities of art-making, she shifted majors and
earned her MFA, teaching painting, printmaking, and textile design for a
few years there while her future business, designing site specific artwork
hatched.
Over the years, Susan has created large-scale commissions for both public
and private collections. Her work can be found internationally, reflecting a
career defined by craftsmanship, scale, and a sensitivity to environment.
In 1995, Susan moved to Orcas Island. Surrounded by forest and sea, she
has cultivated a way of life in which art and daily rhythm are deeply
intertwined. In her studio and garden, she follows the changing light and
seasonal patterns that shape her work.
Today, her practice reflects three decades of life on the island…quiet,
grounded, and open to discovery. She exhibits her work regularly and
accepts a limited number of commissions that align with her evolving
sense of place and purpose.
Susan's Artist Statement
My work explores the tension between presence and impermanence
through large-scale abstract compositions. Rooted in the elements of
nature—air, earth, balance—I seek to evoke a felt sense of stillness, drift, and
motion. The surface becomes a place of quiet resonance, where opposites
hold space together.
I build texture and image using layered techniques: acrylic stains,
silkscreen, block printing, and fragments of photographic imagery. Asian
papers, with their delicate translucency and strength, allow me to work with
both fragility and density—creating fields that appear to breathe.
The
materials themselves are as essential as the marks, guiding the rhythm and
structure of each piece.
Though abstract, my paintings often carry a spatial memory or atmospheric
weight, asking the viewer to slow down and feel rather than decode. I work
large because I want the viewer’s body to be engaged—to feel surrounded,
absorbed, and stilled.
Lately, I’ve been working with forms inspired by seeds—shapes that hold
potential, memory, and quiet energy. These impressions show up in my
work not as illustrations, but as felt marks: seeds as containers, as
beginnings, as blueprints for becoming. They echo the cycles of growth
and pause I’m always circling back to. They contain the cosmos…the
connection of linking us all with history, science and art.
