Sue Schlabach

Sue Schlabach lives and works in rural Vermont where she and her family are renovating an old brick house. She loves the act of making things, whether art, food, gardens, photographs or textiles. She studied painting and photography in the late 1980s, but found herself unable to get started in her twenties. A galvanizing moment came at Charleston, the English country home of painters Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. The house and its furnishings, all painted with simplicity and urgency, inspired her to get started and stop hesitating. She picked up a paintbrush and a camera and didn’t look back. Having a daughter also pushed the making of art to the forefront. “Children make art without a critical filter,” she says, “and watching that helped me turn off the critic and get to work.” She makes art with ink, paint, paper, wood, old papers and canvas.