Suzen Moeller

Winfield, Illinois, USA

An avid learner, Suzen enjoys exploring and creating with colored pencils, paints, and any other artistic media she can find. A nutritional epidemiologist and spiritual director by training, her day job is Professor of Health Sciences and Nursing at North Park University in Chicago. With an empty nest on the horizon, Suzen is increasingly carving out time to return to her first love—putting color on a surface.

She is currently president of the Colored Pencil Society of America’s District Chapter 103-Chicago IL.

“My unbridled curiosity leads me to seek and explore the possibilities for joy everywhere — but most especially in nature and the arts.

I enjoy co-creating with colored pencils, paints, and any other artistic media I can find. The “funnest” part is just playing around, seeing what happens. The pieces I submitted are the result of pure play!

The exploratory process of play is, for me, the most exciting part of creating. What will happen if I do this? Whoa! That’s where I find the purest delight, in unexpected beauty that stops me in my tracks.”

Emergent Remains. This 8.5 x 11 inch piece emerged from the remains of playing around with gelli printing using Derwent Inktense blocks and pencils on drafting film. New to all of the materials and the method of gelli printing, I added blue Inktense to spice-up a really cool orange gelli printed abstract. Turns out dried Inktense reactivates when a new wet color is applied over it on drafting film! I gasped, laughed, and later, played around with a tiny eraser to carve the flower, sticks, and rocks out of the mud. Later, I played over those areas with wet and dry Inktense pencils, seeing what might further emerge. The piece is inspired by a photo I took in the eastern province of Nepal, while working with university students and local villagers to help install solar panels at an elementary school.

Emergent Remains Backlit. This is the same as the first piece (Emergent Remains), but backlit by daylight from a nearby window. It is fun to explore/play with how a piece can look different depending on what is behind it.

Playing Paint. While I was busy trying to paint a “serious” piece, the tempera paints decided to play on their own! They oozed around on a wet butcher tray palette, creating fun shapes that caught my attention and pulled me back to the joy outside of my own serious mind. Each time I look at it, I see something new!