Meet Suzan Woodruff

We were lucky to catch up with Suzan Woodruff recently and have shared our conversation below.

Suzan, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

Suzan Woodruff
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The combination of nature and nurture were the foundations of my confidence. My parents divorced before I turned two years old and my mother, sister and I went to live with my maternal grandparents. They were the pillars of my nurturing. My grandfather was a gold prospector and my grandmother a member of the Church of Self Realization. She believed in reincarnation. When I was a young girl, because I began drawing at a very, very young age, she told me I had been a great artist in another lifetime. I believed her so I never had to decide to be an artist I just was one.
My mother was an amazing independent single mom who went back to college and got her degree and became a teacher. My father’s side of the family went back to the Mayflower. A descendent of his, John Dwight Woodruff, with his friend Shoshone Chief Washakie’s permission he built the first white settler in Big Horn Wyoming. The pioneering spirit and love of nature is in my blood.
I was brought up with no limitations on who I could become. We lived on the edge of a huge desert preserve, so instead of only having a suburb to roam in, the desert was my playground. As many children of that earlier era, my sister and left in the morning and came home just before dark. I wandered around, first on foot and then on a dirt bike. My grandfather taught me to drive a stick shift truck at the age of 12.
In school, even form first grade, the arts were the only subjects where I stood out. I received a partial art scholarship to attend Arizona State University. My father, who was always encouraging me in pursuit of my artistic ambitions, passed away at 50 when I was 16. I was able to draw on his veteran benefits and working odd jobs to support myself. I illustrated cards and posters and paintings of wildlife.
Soon after I started working at an art press. At the time, I was the only woman and this was way before Me Too. I had to be fierce and produce exceptional work. I learned how to navigate in a man’s field. The process of printing art became a great teaching tool. I worked with older, more well-known artists. I became a Master Printer, and then I trained apprentices. This taught me to be generous and patient with other artists especially women because the predominantly male environment could be intimidating.
I began painting and printing abstracts. I began showing in the west and selling internationally. Early on places like Scottsdale Center and the Mesa Art Center collected my work. I traveled for 3 months by myself in Europe, which increased the confidence of self-reliance and independence. I moved to LA to work with a publisher of prints. Then I opened my own studio, incorporating it to Zuma Studios. I was the CEO. All the while, I continued to exhibit and sell my abstract paintings. I met my future husband, a novelist, when he visited LA from his native New York. After a months-long distance relationship, we decided I would move to New York. Five years later, we were offered a one-year live-work at the 18th Street Art Center in Santa Monica, CA. Soon after moving permanently to LA, we won a four month fully funded residency at Sanskriti Art Center in New Delhi, India. Experiencing that culture opened up new opportunities and insights into my own art making practice. My show at Art Konsult Gallery, run by the Tagore family sold out, which was a fulfilling as well as confidence building experience.
I was diagnosed with oral cancer when I first moved to New York City. I underwent two surgeries to remove the cancerous tumors. It remained dormant for eight years before recurring, which began a series of recurrences where I underwent 12 surgeries in 15 years. Still, I continued to work, exhibit, hike, bike along the beach and in the mountain; which I had really missed doing while living in New York.
In 2018, my cancer returned in a new and near-lethal manner. I underwent jaw replacement surgery with no surety that I would survive. Thankfully, I don’t remember much of the next two surgeries, which helped me so I could eat more normally. It was a long and stressful recovery. A bone from my leg was used to replace my jaw so I couldn’t even walk for a while. This went on for years learning to swallow, eat or talk. And, for the first time in my life, even paint. All the things I had taken for granted were now a struggle. I did all the necessary therapies and exercises so I could one day hopefully return to a “normal” life.
I began to work in my studio again, though very slowly and hesitantly at first. I was not as confident as I had been. A near death experience can change you in more ways than I can describe. I did some new pieces. Then, about a year and a half ago I was offered a solo show at the Billis-Williams Gallery. I started to work more steadily, not knowing how my brush with death would affect my work. I paint very physically and with mindfully mediation. Abstraction through the influence of nature. I had invented a gravity over 20 years ago easel that moves and tilts in all directions, so I can create natural phenomenon on panels. I also did fiberglass sculpture shaped like waves and painted with holographic paint to shimmer like crystal.
My new paintings seemed to explode with life. The exhibition went great! I got several terrific gratifying reviews. I will be doing a commission for new sculptures and am deciding about future exhibitions outside of LA. I am so happy I could find my confidence and do it again.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I was born into a fourth-generation family of the American West. As a child in Phoenix, I began roaming the desert, immersing herself in endless spaces and spectacular natural vistas and star-filed night skies that infuse the combination of nature and ethereality that form the basis of her abstract paintings and sculptures. I was influenced by the spirituality of her grandmother, who raised her with the philosophy of Self Realization, her gold prospector grandfather who taught her how to “read” rocks, the erudition of her father who taught Olde English and the distinctly Arizona-Bohemian lifestyle of her mother. A survivor of 20 oral cancer operations, I remain an avid hiker, biker, boogie boarder and reader of rocks as well as books.

I’ve been a self-supporting artist her entire adult life, received an art scholarship and attended Arizona State University. While studying painting and sculpture at ASU, I also exhibited painting and sculpture as well as working as a printmaker and illustrator. I left Arizona for Los Angeles, where she ran an art press and exhibited her paintings in Phoenix, Los Angeles and internationally. After meeting her husband, the novelist Bruce Bauman, I moved to New York. In 1999 we returned to Los Angeles.

My work has been work has been exhibited in galleries and museums in the US, Canada, Europe and Asia. She is a recipient of an NEA grant and received residencies at the Sanskriti Center for the Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and 18th Street Arts Center. In 2024 Woodruff has been reviewed or featured in Artillery Magazine, Canvas Rebel, 13Things LA, Designer News Now, and Architectural Digest (’23.)Previously she has been reviewed in Art Ltd. Magazine (cover), Budapest Sun (cover), Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, Artweek, Delhi Today, Art Scene, Money magazine and many others.

After five years of recovery from jaw replacement surgery, I just had my first solo exhibition since 2017. I have a number of offers for future solo and group exhibitions, which I am now in the process of scheduling.

My work has been collected in scores of museums, corporate and private collections such as the House of Saud, Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith, Todd Wagner, Ibrahim Alkazi (The Sepia Collection), Martin and Norma Stevens, Michael Korie, The Scottsdale Center for the Arts, City of Mesa Cultural Center, The Sanskriti Foundation, Ritz Carlton Hotels, AT&T, Sperry Rand, SONY, Warner Bothers and many more.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Tenacity, passion, keeping an open mind and generosity of spirit.

What’s been one of your main areas of growth this year?

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Creating new paintings and sculptures for a solo exhibition took 12 months to complete. I’m so happy that I could still do it after a long recovery .

Contact Info:

• Website: https://suzanwoodruff.com
• Instagram: suzanwoodruffstudios
• Facebook: Suzan Woodruff
• Linkedin: Suzan Woodruff