Susan Hall, American (1943 - )

  Susan Hall lives and works in Point Reyes Station, California, a town in the heart of the Point Reyes National Seashore. This pristine wilderness area is dominated by a mosaic of bays and ocean, rolling grass lands and forests. It is inhabited by a diversity of wildlife, including over 450 species of birds, mountains lions, deer, bobcats, foxes, and elk. Ms. Hall who is a native of this area returned after spending twenty years in New York City.

In her book, “Painting Point Reyes”, Hall says, “Point Reyes is the center of my painting life. Point Reyes has been my life and when I haven’t lived here, it has been an underground stream that spoke to me in dreams and visions.”

While living and painting in New York City, Ms. Hall exhibited her work widely in museums and galleries. Among them are the Whitney Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Art; Nancy Hoffman Gallery, Trabia MacAfee Gallery, Phyllis Kind Gallery, Chicago; Ovsey Gallery, Los Angeles.

In addition, her work has been featured in group exhibitions throughout the United States and abroad, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the San Francisco Museum, the Oakland Museum, Baltimore Museum, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Hudson River Museum, the Brooklyn Museum and the Kunst museum Lucerne, Switzerland.

Ms. Hall has received fellowships from the Adolph and Esther Gottleib Foundation, two National Endowment for the Arts awards, and grants from the Pollack Krasner Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts.

Her work is included in many public and corporate collections, including the New Museum, the Whitney Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, Carnegie Institute, St. Louis Museum, Storm King Art Center, Chase Manhattan Bank, Becton Dickinson, and the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

She received a Bachelor in Fine Arts degree from the California College of Arts and Crafts and a Master in Arts degree from the University of California, Berkeley. She has been on the faculty of the School of Visual Arts, New York City, and has taught at the San Francisco Art Institute, University of Texas at San Antonio and Austin, University of Colorado at Boulder, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, and Cooper Union in New York City.

Since returning to Point Reyes, Hall has been very involved with painting. She also began to make ceramics that reflect the rich warmth and generosity of spirit of northern California. She has devoted time to land preservation and is a supporter of the Marin Agricultural Land Trust. Also of interest to her are projects that protect the cultural and environmental aspects of Point Reyes.

Her painting reflects the magical and metaphorical potential of West Marin. Hall says, “I see in landscape painting the reflection of the ever-changing canopy of the universe as well as the intimate recesses of the human psyche and soul.”