Susan Chambers

Home Grown National Park

Acrylic on canvas, wooden birdhouse

"My urban backyard garden with flowers and vegetables is my homegrown Arkansas ‘Giverny’ created by me and my family. My paintings of this space are down to earth, with an emphasis on native plants, birds, and pollinators. Letting my plants go to seed and leaving leaf litter not only helps the birds but also creates a diverse, surprising space based on chance. The garden grows itself, and I look for compositions within that space. It is not a lawn but an ecosystem.

My yard is informally part of a larger network of citizen-owned land, the Homegrown National Park. This project was proposed by the environmentalist Douglas Tallamy, who encourages gardeners to grow native plants and trees for the insects and birds without any use of herbicides and pesticides. As he writes, ‘Even moderate success could collectively restore some semblance of ecosystem function to more than twenty million acres of what is now ecological wasteland.’ This new approach to landscape and garden can be ‘normalized’ by creating art based on this new aesthetic. All are welcome in this new, nurturing space."

— Susan Chambers

About the artist

Susan Chambers

I enjoyed a free-range childhood - digging in the dirt, exploring the woods, hours of unsupervised play. My first studio experience in painting was at the Arkansas Arts Center Museum School at the age of twelve. In 1974, I graduated from Rhodes College with a B.A. in Art and in 1979 received an M.F.A in Painting from the University of Georgia at Athens. My professional experiences in the arts have included residencies for the Arkansas Arts Council and adjunct positions at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, University of Central Arkansas and Hendrix College. Having been exhibited nationally and regionally, my work is in public and corporate collections including Carillon Importers (Absolut), Central Arkansas Library System, University of Arkansas Medical System, Southeast Arkansas Arts and Science Center, and Systematics. My husband and I live in the Quapaw Quarter historic district, where we operate Chambers Studio.