Elroy artist Suanne Cepek shares her journey into art
Every artist has their own special story of how they evolved in their chosen medium. Suanne Cepek is no exception. A transplant to Wisconsin, she grew up in Southern California, just outside of San Diego in Carlsbad. At that time Carlsbad was just a small town and not the thriving metropolis it is today.
“I think in those years, this is before all the touristy kind of things, it was very much an art culture area,” said Suanne.
She recalled, high school provided her with a wonderful education for her in painting, sculpture, and as she put it, “all kinds of things”. Her years involved in art at high school, she believes is how her love for art started, and that allowed her to become more involved in the type/style of art she wanted to create.
Thinking about the influences that encouraged her creativity Suanne said, “My mother has had very wonderful talents in the art world, but nothing that I really wanted to do. Not landscape, not flowers, not the kind of thing I wanted to do. So, my education kind of broadened that out. My dad was a builder. He was a carpenter, and built different kinds of furniture. I think between the two of them, watching them develop what their enjoyment was, helped me develop artistically.” Suanne noted that her father’s building was a sideline as he had a regular job. Building was not a hobby, but something he enjoyed.
Suanne recalled they would bring the things he built to craft fairs. Her mother’s painting creations though, “never went anywhere for that kind of thing”. She stressed that her mother’s creations were purely personal, gifting her art to family, like baby birth plates that she would paint on, and such.
“So, for me, I wanted to develop more, and so as the years went along, then I met my husband Gary. We have a wonderful, large family of six children. During those years, that became my focus, and art became less of a focus. However, there were moments in between where I could continue to develop my abilities, and the talent grew and I received encouragement from all kinds of different directions.”
Having lived different places out West, most recently on the Nebraska/Wyoming border, Suanne and Gary decided to retire, coming back to Gary’s Elroy roots and the family farm. Suanne said that prior to moving to Elroy for retirement, she did sell her paintings “here and there in different shops”.
Gary has always been one of Suanne’s biggest fans and supporters of her artistic abilities. He was quick to point something out that he feels, makes her artwork so special. “One of the gifts that Suanne has been given, is to be able to look at things. We all look at things. I look out the window and see trees. She doesn't see the trees; she sees the colors. I've learned so much from her. When we go for walks in the woods, she all the time is looking at the shadows, the light on a tree. She will say, ‘look at the bark, what do you see’? Oh, I see a tree. ‘No, no, what do you see?’ And so, the gifts she has is she’s able to penetrate and see textures, see colors. See, not just the outline, but see the inner shapes of it, to see the goodness that's been placed there.” Gary also said she's a very good teacher. “She has, over a quick number of years now, had children come here to learn from her. All of a sudden, they're going through our gardens, or maybe out into the woods looking, and she's saying the same things.”
Gary recalled when, as he put it, “were young marrieds”, they chose to settle out in her home area for a couple of years. One of the things they would do, is go down to the beach to the jetties and she was looking all the time at the water, but seeing more than water, or the sand. “We would find washed up pieces of coral, etc. She would take those home, and she could see with it, things she could make. Her dad being a carpenter, one time dismantled a Redwood water tank. Suanne was over visiting him, and looked at the boards of wood he had sorted out from that tank. She looks at the wood, and she looks at the grain in the wood, and starts seeing all of these different scenes in them. With a palette of paint, she accentuated the grains, and all of a sudden, you have these beautiful landscapes.”
Having lived in Wisconsin for some years, Gary has seen her art work surge because she's stimulated by her surroundings out in the country. “She has been able to develop in our area here. Gardens, she does the same thing with gardens as she does in the woods. She's always looking at plants. I'll be up in the morning and she's standing here, it's barely light, and she is staring, seeing different shadows. It fills her mind, fills her heart, and then she wants to make it into art,” said Gary.
Suanne will confess, she is not the best artist in the world (don’t let her fool you), and there's so much she has yet to learn. She loves impressionism because she’s not trying to paint an exact representation of a subject and as an impressionist, has her own impressionistic style.
“Impressionism is a large category. Mine is very, very light on architecture. Mine is more the natural world. So, between the animals and plants, and what's around, we've got a wonderful spot here because I've got all this that sits on both sides of us (the marsh and hills on their property), and then more of my gardens[sic]. Out here, I sell plants, perennial plants. With all of that and all those combinations of things, they kind of feed my artistic side. I can go for a walk out in the woods and come back and I want to paint, it just spurs on all that creative juice,” Suanne said. “So, people say to me, ‘well, do you have photographs you paint from?’, and I say no, my photograph is here. I look, I do a lot of staring. I tell the kids in class. This is the one time your parents won't tell you not to stare. You need to look, you can't just guess. Yes, the tree trunk is brown, tree leaves are green. No, you have to see it. What color is water? Well, that's a whole big story,” she said with a chuckle.
Suanne said she takes in and involves the whole idea that in impressionistic art, you have to see, smell, and experience your subject. “If you walk through a cattle yard, you're gonna smell it. You want to be able to get that in your picture. Not physically, but with the paint to express what you've seen. So, it's all the senses that we have.”
Since retiring and moving to Wisconsin, Suanne said she has the luxury of time. “Our children are all scattered in in the United States and in Mexico, so they're too far away to be here on a regular basis. So, this is my family out here. I enjoy all of this out here and try to capture that with paint, and if people like it, that's cream on top of the cake. I hope people find joy in my paintings.”
Well, some people in 1991 at the Scotts Bluff County fair in Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, found great joy in Suanne’s artwork, awarding her a first-place ribbon. Suanne’s award-winning painting was a fall scene of a small lake surrounded by Birch trees and can be found in the photo gallery at the end of this article. Though the piece is untitled, she said there is a reason for that. See, she does not want to lead the viewer, rather she believes the viewer should look at one of her paintings and be allowed to develop their own feelings and emotions the sense of sight invokes.
Suanne has found a local venue to share her art with the public the past few months at the Gundersen St. Joseph’s Hospital and Clinics in Hillsboro, Wisconsin. “We absolutely love featuring the incredible artwork of our talented local artists on the Howard-Steiner Community Art wall,” said Dan Howard, Manager of the Marketing & Community Relations at the Hospital and Clinics. Howard, an artist himself added, “We truly believe in the power of art to uplift our spirits and enhance our well-being, whether we are admiring it or creating it ourselves. That's why we've created this special space to showcase the diverse and vibrant works of artists in our community. Suanne's pieces are especially captivating and bring such a burst of color and intrigue to the wall. We cannot help but feel delighted when we see our staff and patients taking a moment to stop and appreciate her work. It is no secret that art has a positive impact on our emotional health, and we feel so honored to provide a space for local artists to showcase their talent and contribute to the healing environment of our facility.”
“I have been displaying my paintings for the past three months that Dan Howard oversees. I will be displaying my art for three more months so the nurses and doctors that walk past the wall, or patients who happen to come up the stairs instead of the elevator can see them, and maybe it gives them a little lift. Maybe it takes them away from their troubles or their problems. So, that's kind of the joy of where I am, with what I do,” she said.
Curious, I asked Suanne what she gets out of her painting, if not obvious, and naturally she obliged. “What I get out of it, are a couple of different things. I want to stretch where I've been to where I like to be so I try new things. This year, I tried a lot of different animal pictures or paintings that I've never tried before. I've sold a number of those. So, I want to improve. I can sit there and spend hours painting and not know there’s a big snowstorm going on outside, there's no consciousness of it. All there is the canvas and the paint. I don't take a photo and say ‘this is what I'm going to do’. I have a concept of what I want to do. I play with the paint and just get immersed. I lose track of all kinds of reality.”
A fan of oil paint, this winter she decided to try some work with watercolors. She went back and forth, deciding it’s the oil paint that she really enjoys. “I don't know if it's because of my dad working with fumie things in the garage. Maybe that's part of it. It's just something that I like to smell, I like to work with it, whereas a lot of people do not. It's how it works, how it reacts, how the brush moves. The whole interaction of it all, is so much more complete than acrylic. Acrylic can't do the same thing oil can do. Oil is like the limousine, and the other ones are, I don't know, a Chevy I suppose,” she said laughing.
Not a typical canvas, Suanne has not left the couples ceiling untouched by her painting. The couples ceiling is adorned with what looks like an amazing root system of a tree. “Gary's roots were here as a child, I’m the transplant. I feel we were drawn back here. And so, whether we see it as roots or plant vines, it's incorporated us into the land.”
Normally, I would end this article with something catchy or thought provoking, but I’ll let Suanne wrap this up in her words. “Painting, that's my fun, my joy. I plan to keep painting, keep trying.”
To view or purchase Suanne’s artwork, contact her at (608)-489-2725, by e-mail at sugarcepek1@live.com, or on Facebook to see photos of her work.
Suanne holds painting classes at her and Gary’s home during the summer months and into September. She holds private sessions, group sessions, and encourages sessions with children. Prices do vary.
She starts selling her perennials the end of April or beginning of May, depending on the weather and growth of the plants. To keep the plants healthy and most viable, they are dug up when chosen.
