Susan Denniston

Susan Denniston is a printmaker, painter, and mixed media artist.  Her work contemplates the ambiguity of a world in which things are not always quantifiable and clear; acknowledging our fragility, vulnerability, and certain impermanence.  The inherent messiness and imperfection of human connection is often imbedded in her process of layering and tearing/scrubbing away, revealing glimpses of what lies beneath; making marks, making corrections, making connections, making amends.  Leaving a trace.

Denniston was born in Pittsburgh, PA and received her BA from Bates College, Lewiston, ME.  In 2000, after 20 years in the medical software field, she left to pursue her interest in art.  She has studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Mass Art, Boston; and the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown.

Her work is regularly seen throughout New England in regional art museums and college and university art galleries. It has been selected for exhibit by curators from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Smithsonian American Art Museum; as well as by artists, professors, and gallery owners. 

Jurors have awarded her numerous prizes for her work. A print is in the Boston Public Library’s collection of fine art prints and in a portfolio of prints in Krakow, Poland. 

She has shown important bodies of work in several small group exhibits.

She was a visiting artist at Wheaton College in 2013. She participated in a cultural exchange to Krakow, Poland in 2016 and has studied etching at Studio Camnitzer outside of Lucca, Italy, returning several times for residencies.  In 2012, she completed a summer residency at Full Tilt Print Studio.

Denniston served as president of the Monotype Guild of New England, a national organization exhibiting unique prints, from 2008-2010 and currently serves as treasurer and executive board member of the Boston Printmakers, a 70 year old North American print organization. She is a juried artist member of the National Association of Women Artists, the Boston Printmakers, the Cambridge Art Association, and the South Shore Art Center.  Short essays of hers have appeared in Talking Writing: A Magazine for Writers.