Susan Hostetler Sold at Auction Prices

Susan Hostetler - Eco-Artist influenced by travels and nature


Susan Hostetler has been making art her life since earning her fine arts degree from Western Michigan University. She added hand papermaking to her painting skills with awards from the Russell Siebert and Tiffany Foundation to study with Twinrocker Handmade Paper in Indiana. There she began making custom paper for such artists as Rauschenberg, Warhol and Jasper Johns.

Starting her travels in earnest, Hostetler in 1980 set up a hand papermaking mill in Friedberg, Germany. During her four years in Germany, the Gutenberg and Klingspor Museums hosted exhibitions of her work. Moving her painting studio to Barcelona she used Spain as a base for intensive image collection in the Mediterranean, Adriatic and Aegean regions. The sketches, photos and evocative flora and fragments were transferred to her paintings in her Barcelona studio. Whether working in gouache and mixed media on handmade paper or oil on canvas, Hostetler has always been inspired by nature.

Setting up a studio in New York City Hostetler traveled to southern Africa and the South Pacific. "Travel has always influenced my work", she said. "Sometimes I think of myself as a 'travel painter' as one might call an itinerant scribe a 'travel writer' – I see, and experience, other cultures and lands through the fauna and flora and light there."

Among her recent work hanging in permanent collections, Hostetler has created large, multi-panel site-specific commissions for the Federal Reserve Bank, as well as special awards commissions for the US Committee for UNIFEM, Four Seasons Hotel, Deutche Bank, Dunn & Bradstreet, Readers Digest, IBM, Fidelity Corp, the Humane Society of the US, Counterpart International and several other organizations.

Susan Hostetler is represented by galleries in NYC, Boston, Los Angeles and New Jersey. Her work has been shown on the sets of the film, "You've Got Mail" as well as TV series, "Beverly Hills 90201". Her studio is in Washington DC