"The year I turned fifty I decided to reinvent my life and become an artist. At the time I was half of the management team in our small business, working 40 to 50 hours a week and perfectly happy, so the decision surprised almost everyone, including myself.
And it all started in - of all places - my garage. I found an article about painted furniture. By the middle of July in 1998 I was kneeling on the cement in my hot garage, happily painting commissioned Adirondack chairs with what I thought of as *real art* for $200 a pop.
Three years later, in the middle of a hot July, I was on the second floor of the Galleria degli Uffici in Florence, Italy, standing in front of Titian’s painting, Venus of Urbino, realizing everything I had ever thought about painting was wrong."
Sue Favinger Smith returned to college and in 2005 she graduated with honors and the Distinguished Student-Department of Art Award from Oregon State University - Cascades. In 2008, she was the only woman in Oregon - a state recently ranked 3rd in artists per capita - to be juried into the National Association of Women Artists during their Fall jury process. She has mentored other artists, taught painting to both adults and children, worked at a commercial art gallery for four years, and served as a board member for two art groups. Her work has been exhibited in major national shows, including the American Impressionist Society - where she received an Award for Excellence in 2011, Oil Painters of America Western Regional, American Women Artists, National Association of Women Artists, Women Artists of the West, and the National Oil and Acrylic Painters Society, as well as numerous gallery group and solo shows. Her work is in private collections in the United States and Canada.
She writes Ancient Artist: Developing an Art Career after 50, a blog dedicated to empowering artists seeking to reinvent themselves at midlife, because she remembers how it was and still is to feel isolated in the creative work all artists do. She is also the author of the book Ancient Wisdom Emerging Artist, a business and creative life plan for the mature artist.
She continues to work, write, and paint every day from her studio and home in the High Desert of Oregon
