Press Release

SUSAN PATERSON
Solo Show of Recent Etchings and Watercolours
October 2 – 29, 2006
Lyghtesome Gallery
Antigonish, Nova Scotia


A One-woman show of recent etchings and watercolors by Dartmouth artist, Susan K. Paterson, is the October feature exhibit at Lyghtesome Gallery, 166 Main St., Antigonish, The show opens on Thursday, October 5 with a public reception and the artist in attendance from 4 – 6pm at Lyghtesome. Susan Paterson first joined the roster of Lyghtesome printmakers over twenty years ago and went on to have her first solo show in the fall of 1985 and then again in 1991 and 2000. Originally scheduled for 2004, this fourth solo show features a collection of recent etchings and twelve watercolours that the artist has been gradually accumulating for exhibition. With the demands of a young family and a successful artistic career in full swing, Paterson has learned to pace her commitments. The recent acquisition of her own printing press means she is now able to work exclusively out of her own home studio, located on Hawthorne St. in Dartmouth, just a fifteen minute walk from the Harbour Ferry terminal.
Susan Paterson’s work is well-known throughout the Maritime region for its technical excellence and sensitive capture of the beauty of rural and seaside landscape: surf and sand, trees and wooded streams, farm land and animals. She is also known for her floral stilllife paintings and “Victorian style” interiors, often set in the intimate warmth of her own home. Over the years she has done many etchings and watercolours of Sherbrooke Village and surrounding area, where her mother‘s family has their roots and Susan spent much of her childhood. With warm, true colors, Susan presents an elegant, reflective realism, inviting because it is familiar and rendered with a quiet confidence that penetrates the subtleties of weather, mood and well-being.
Born in Halifax in 1958, Susan Paterson first studied art under Ted Pulford and David Silverberg at Mt. Allison University, Sackville, N.B. where she graduated with a BFA in 1980. She pursued further study in painting and drawing at Sunbury Shores, St. Andrews, N.B. and the Byam School of Art, London, England, and then went on to learn lithography and etching at the Nova Scotia School of Art and Design in Halifax. After living several years in Toronto, Susan Paterson moved back to the Maritimes and established her home and studio in Dartmouth. Since 1979, her work has appeared regularly in public and private galleries in Alberta, Ontario, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and been commissioned by organizations such as the Victoria General Hospital, Halifax, N.S. the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Sherbrooke Village, and the Dartmouth Heritage Museum, Dartmouth, N.S. Her work can be found in numerous private and corporate collections including Husky Oil, the Bank of Detroit, Citibank, Nova Scotia Art Bank, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Bell Canada, Employment & Immigration Canada, Atlantic Lottery Corporation, TD Bank, Bergengren Credit Union, Olympia and York Developments, Magna International, K.K. Sakai Co. of Tokyo, Mitsu Taiyo Kobe Bank, and Mercantile and General Reinsurance Group.
Over the last few years, Susan has been an active member in the Atlantic chapter of the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour. She has volunteered extensively with the Art Committee at Hawthorn School in Dartmouth where her sons Conor, l0, and Kyle, 7, attend school, She has taught watercolour and printmaking to the students and arranged for other artists to come to teach in the classroom, as well as organizing a show of the children’s art and the production of a 16 month calendar of their work. All this as well as having a successful show in 2005 at Fog Forest Gallery in Sackville, N.B. and participating in “A Perseverance of Printmakers” at the Secord Gallery in Halifax this fall.
The Susan Paterson show runs from October 2 – 29, 2006. It can also be viewed on-line as a virtual exhibit at www.lyghtesome.ns.ca. It will be followed in November by the Annual Printmaker Exhibit featuring new work by gallery printmakers and the introduction of work by two new potters in the Antigonish area from the Pink Flamingo Studio, located at Jimtown, Antigonish County.

Please join us at our openning reception Thursday, October 5 with the artist in attendance
from 4 – 6pm at Lyghtesome 166 Main St. Antigonish