Bourdet, Susan

Susan Bourdet’s luminous watercolors combine realistically detailed birds and animals with soft, impressionistic backgrounds, a technique that has evolved through her many years of painting. Watercolor is ideally suited for nature paintings because it works well for detail, but it is the spontaneous, fluid aspect of watercolor that Susan finds most expressive. Much of her work is created with the watercolor paper soaking wet, allowing the pigments to blend and flow without edges. While the realistic parts of the painting accurately describe the subject, the free-flowing backgrounds are all about color and intensity which imply rather than describe background shapes. The viewer’s imagination is then involved in discerning the image.