Susi Schuele
Pingree Grove, IL
Susi Schuele paints emotion into abstract watercolor landscapes and handcrafts faith-inspired jewelry — a creative life lived across mediums.
Message
Susi Schuele is an award-winning abstract artist celebrated for luminous watercolor landscapes that move between color, texture, and raw emotion. Rooted in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and now painting from her home in Pingree Grove, Illinois, she shares her creative life with her husband Chuck and their two dogs, Stardust and Luna — loyal companions who have claimed permanent residence in the studio.
After a fulfilling career spanning technology, graphic design, and web design, Susi answered a deeper calling in 2015 and devoted herself fully to painting. Her work draws from music, scripture, and lived experience, each piece built through layers of gestural abstraction that invite the viewer to feel before they think. Beyond the canvas, her creativity extends into handmade cards, fine art prints, fiber art, and digital design.
A longtime collector of antiques and family heirlooms, Susi finds in old things what she pursues in her own work — the belief that objects and images carry memory, and that beauty is most meaningful when it tells a story.
Her paintings have been exhibited, collected, and cherished by those who find in them a language for what words cannot quite reach. Whether through a sweeping watercolor, a handcrafted piece, or a carefully designed print, Susi's purpose remains constant: to create art that builds a bridge between visual expression and human memory.
Statement
Artist Statement
I am an empath. Words often fall short of what I need to express — but stories never do.
My work takes shape through abstract landscape paintings inspired by lived experience, imagination, scripture, and the music and words that move me most deeply. Gestural abstraction is my chosen language because it allows me to paint with freedom and release — to let go of what I'm carrying and watch something unexpected emerge in its place. In a life marked by high anxiety, the studio is where I find calm.
My process is rooted in minimalism. I scrape pigment across dry paper, then surrender control to water, brushes, palette knives, and sometimes simply air — letting each element transform the work into something alive that I could not have fully planned or predicted.
For me, abstract art is a bridge. The colors carry primary emotions. Music and carefully chosen song titles deepen their resonance, adding a lyrical layer beneath the visual one. Each painting is made to stir memory, emotion, and reflection — so that every time you return to the work, it meets you somewhere new, speaking to both your mind and your heart in a way it didn't quite before.
My story begins the painting. Yours completes it.