Susan Nethercote started out researching, tutoring and lecturing in Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne immediately after graduating from her BA Hons. After career transitions as the owner and designer of fashion label Manque Design, followed by business coaching for creative professionals and painting, Susan established herself as a full-time professional painter in 2016.
Susan is now an abstract floral and botanical painter and creative educator living in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia with her husband and two little girls. She paints in acrylics and mixed media and is deeply inspired by nature and the gardens she encounters both in her local neighbourhood and on her regular overseas adventures.
In her Floral Abstract work Susan seeks to capture and communicate the joy, dynamism and magic of nature through fluid, expressionistic and colourful interpretations of nature’s treasures.
In her Botanical Abstract work, Susan seeks out the decorative patterns inherent in the textures and shapes of more structural flowers and plants to create highly stylised paintings where botanical forms are ‘carved out’ of a white mask of paint.
Both of Susan’s stylistic directions are a contemporary, expressionistic takes on the long tradition of Botanical art. Her work is designed to elicit an emotional response from the viewer rather than document nature. Susan sees her painting practice as the way in which she communes with the beauty of the world and the soul of nature.
Susan loves to teach her panting style on immersive retreats that she runs both in Australia and France. She also licenses her work to magazines and décor brands globally. Additionally, Susan is also a passionate art historian and loves to bring alive her painting workshops with stories of artists past and present. Susan also teaches online painting classes via the education platform Teachable. She enjoys sharing her work and studio adventures with her 75K+ followers on Instagram.
Susan was recently awarded winner of the AGES Society Art Prize for 2022/23.