Susan Frankl, Ups and Downs (Detail) 8”x8”

My journey as an artist began quietly, as an inner pull toward painting that grew stronger as I prepared to step away from a long and fulfilling career in medicine. What first felt like a whisper gradually became a clear and compelling voice. In those early days, the sweeping vistas around my home in Truro and landscapes encountered in my travels served as my inspiration. Before long, representation gave way to abstraction, and I found myself responding less to what I saw and more to what I felt — the color, energy, atmosphere, and movement of the natural world.

My current work centers on abstracted landscapes, inspired by the dunes, grasses, beaches, and expansive skies of the Outer Cape, as well as distinctive environments I have experienced around the world. Rather than represent a specific place, I aim to evoke its essence — the rhythm of wind across sand, shifting tides, luminous horizons, and the quiet power of open space. These paintings are interpretations of landscape filtered through memory, emotion, and perception.

The work evolves through an intuitive, layered process using acrylic paint, often incorporating elements including gold leaf, charcoal, ink pencil, and collage. I begin without a fixed plan, allowing each mark to guide the next until the painting finds its own internal resolution. Texture, pattern, and subtle shifts of color create a sense of depth and movement, inviting the viewer to linger and discover.

My years as a physician and educator deeply inform this practice. In medicine, my most meaningful work arose when knowledge and intuition worked in concert to foster connection and trust. In the studio, a similar dynamic unfolds: when I quiet judgment and fully enter the act of painting, I connect to a sense of wholeness and wonder. It is from that place that my strongest work emerges.

I hope these abstracted landscapes offer viewers a moment of pause — an opportunity to feel grounded, uplifted, and curious. Above all, I aspire for the work to spark connection: to place, to memory, and to something expansive within themselves.

Susan Frankl Pas De Deux (Detail) 16”x16”