Suzanne Damrich, artist

“Living a creative life is exhilarating”

“I believe in living a creative life. There is creativity in each of us — we just need to be open to the opportunities to tap into it.” says Suzanne Damrich, a native Mobilian and artist who “lives in the moment.” 

Suzanne’s dad was a well-known veterinarian in Mobile, and her mother, fluent in French, taught in her later years. “Growing up, they took us to the symphony, the opera and we traveled widely. The home was filled with art and we had a wonderful personal library. I adored music and studied classical piano with the quintessential Tonsmeire School of Music for five years. We were exposed to the arts at an early age, and it positively impacted my life.”

She attended Auburn University where she majored in Social Work, and on the day of her graduation, she married her husband, Dr. Michael Damrich, a cardiovascular surgeon. His residency would take them to Houston where Suzanne was hired to write technical manuals for Hewlett Packard, which she credits as being her first move to embrace the creative life. “It took a lot of creativity to transform those dull technical manuals into something entertaining!”

After seven years in Houston and a short, and enlightening stint in Saudi Arabia for Michael’s work, they decided to move back to Mobile to raise their family. Though she was not practicing art in the way she had always dreamed, she had come to realize that each of her experiences was painting a path to her creative life.

With Michael’s schedule, Suzanne decided to stay at home with the children. “Once they were school-age, I secretly began buying paints.” She recalls going to bed early after the kids went to sleep., when the inevitable midnight emergency call would come for Michael, she would find herself staying awake and painting until daybreak.

“I was clueless about what I was doing.” She would find a picture of something she loved and copy it. She took her first art class from B. Tucker. “It was fabulous, and I was hooked!”

One of the surprising things Suzanne discovered with allowing creativity to guide her life was how all of her interests overlapped. “As I painted, thoughts would pop into my head, ideas that otherwise would lie dormant, and I would jot them down in my journal. Or when I was stuck with a particular aspect of painting, I got the urge to run to the piano and play for a while, which somehow reconnected me emotionally to what I was trying to paint. But if that didn’t work, I would stroll outside and work in the garden.” She laughs as she describes her process: “To an outsider, it probably looks like I spend my day running in circles, but it works for me!”

For years, she would attend icon writing workshops at Camp Beckwith on Weeks Bay and the Visitation Monastery in Mobile.  “Those times were restorative, gazing at inspirational images and learning how to paint that traditional method. In particular, I loved learning how to apply gold leaf. I would paint duplicate icons over and over and give many away to friends or strangers because I was painting for sheer enjoyment.”

She expanded her painting interests and took as many art classes as she could make time for. “I had a great group of like-minded friends who were just as eager to learn as I was, and we either brought teachers to Mobile to teach us or we traveled to them.”

In 2010, both of Suzanne’s parents passed away within six months of each other. “They were my mentors for my creative life and we often spoke about developing intuition.”  As a memorial, in 2011, Dauphin Way United Methodist Church commissioned Suzanne to do a twelve-image set of Stations of the Cross in honor of her parents.

“This was an emotional time and painting was a therapeutic way for me to grieve.” In In retrospect, she is reminded again, that creativity helped her get through a crisis.

For the last 15 years, Suzanne has been doing encaustic painting, an ancient technique that was revived in the 1950s by Jasper Johns. ”I first heard about encaustic while at an icon workshop. The oldest image of Christ is encaustic - over 1500 years old. I told myself I would one day learn how to use the medium.”

Her tools are a blowtorch and a hot plate filled with cups of oil pigment dissolved in hot beeswax. “No bees are harmed!” Suzanne is quick to add. “The wax is the natural byproduct of the honey gathering process.” The hot, colored wax is painted onto a rigid surface just as you would paint in any other medium.  “As it cools,” she says, “it is easily manipulated with the torch and the colors meld together in unexpected ways. At this point, depending upon the subject, sometimes I carve into the wax to create the image.” 

She literally “plays with fire.”  

Suzanne is also somewhat famous for her Butterfly Garden. “I grow lots of different plants, but butterfly gardening is my favorite.” She has designed butterfly gardens for several friends who are especially concerned about the vanishing habitat of the monarch butterfly, which also happens to be a pollinator. 

“The monarch is the poster child for all pollinators.” Monarchs, which are endangered, migrate from Mexico to the United States and Canada. “What you do for the butterfly restores the habitat for all pollinators,” she says. 

She, along with Farin Whatley, created The Mystical Migration of the Monarch, a film that premiered at the Crescent Theater in downtown Mobile. It was so well received that they were encouraged to enter the movie into film festivals, which led to several awards and a trip to Mexico to document the migration firsthand. The film was expanded into a documentary, which is available on YouTube. 

Suzanne is an amazing person full of positive energy and light. She believes living creatively is exhilarating and restorative. “Painting is often a solitary pursuit and therefore, contemplative. When you are at your best, you are creating images from a place deep in your heart. There is a certain level of risk, exposing your innermost feelings.” But she adds, “It is gratifying when someone connects to your art.”

While she has shown her work in juried exhibitions in Chicago, Nashville, and Atlanta, her most recent solo show was at Sophiella Gallery in Mobile. The title “Awe and Wonder” says it all for her. “Being creative puts me in touch with something mystical and benevolent which sustains me,” she says. “It causes me to dwell in a space of awe and wonder. I like being curious about life -  there is so much to be in awe of!”

Thanks, Suzanne. You are truly an inspiration! You can see her work locally at Sophiella Gallery in Mobile or go to her website at www.suzannedamrich.com.