Susan Skilling received her MFA from the University of Washington. She has exhibited in the Northwest since 1977. Skilling’s work has been collected by the City of Seattle, City Light Collection; Boeing Corporation, Chicago; Wild Ginger Restaurant, Seattle; and Microsoft Art Collection. She has been included in exhibitions at the Seattle Art Museum; Museum of Northwest Art, La Conner; and the Bellevue Arts Museum. Skilling lives and works in Seattle, WA. 

Susan Skilling's paintings are spare and elegant meditations on such widely varied subjects as Tibetan mandalas, plant forms, and slices of rocks, geodes and crystal. Often the work is geometrical but, even then, an organic sensitivity pervades the formal choices made by the artist. Along with artists like Morris Graves or Anne Appleby, Skilling's choices of imagery, color and content lead her in the pursuit of the sublime.

Painting with mineral based gouache paint, some of it handmade by the artist, Skilling creates a dense layering of subtly nuanced color over a handmade Thai mulberry paper surface. Her palette is somber and modest, with occasional highlights of brilliant, saturated color.

Since her early shows with Foster/White Gallery and last few decades at Greg Kucera Gallery, each body of her work has been a slow, quiet revelation of this artist's path toward a personal enlightenment. This is the kind of artist who is led by her inner voice and not by the dictates of fashion or the marketplace. Nonetheless, her work has maintained a broad area of contact with contemporary concerns in painting.

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March 2025
EverOut by The Stranger
Recommended - Susan Skilling: Wanderings
by Lindsay Costello

March 1, 2017
The Stranger
The Best Art Shows In Seattle: Spring 2017
by Jen Graves

January 17, 2013
The Seattle Times
Jeffrey Simmons' fastidious geometries in watercolor - Susan Skilling and Jeffrey Simmons at Greg Kucera Gallery
by Michael Upchurch

Vanguard Seattle Blog

Susan Skilling at Greg Kucera

by Claire Reiner

December 10, 2004

Seattle Times

A Careful Observer's Meditative Impressionism
by Sheila Farr

“At Greg Kucera Gallery, Susan Skilling's delicate gouache paintings, most on handmade Thai mulberry paper, reflect on the cosmos. They aren't abstractions but contemplations on the way moonlight filters through the night sky or waves on the surface of water. Skilling balances the visual affirmations and choppy brushstrokes of Impressionism with the quiet meditations of Zen Buddhism…”

December 10, 2004
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Visual Arts
A Classic Northwest Celebration of the 'Lovely Muck'
by Regina Hackett

“What could be the anthem of the Northwest School came from London poet A.E. Housman: "And down in lovely muck I've lain, happy till I rose again."

Susan Skilling was raised on the lovely muck of the Northwest School's color palette, those muted grounds seeded with light…”

December 1 - 7, 2004
Seattle Weekly Visual Arts

SUSAN SKILLING AND LYNNE WOODS TURNER
by Andrew Engelson

“Minimalism is usually a cold, calculating brand of visual art. But Seattle's Skilling and Portland's Turner manage to inject a hefty dose of emotion into simple, austere forms…”