Sue Martin: Nature-inspired Abstract Painting
Wed September 24, 2025 @ 10:00 am – 4:00 pm
Cost: $150
Maximum of 8 / Minimum of 5 – All levels, but some experience helpful.
In this workshop, participants will play with paint, building abstract layers of acrylic and mark-making media. During the process, participants will explore forms, colors, and patterns from the natural world to lend meaning to layers. In a push-pull with abstraction and representation, participants will create paintings that invite the viewer to complete the picture with their own interpretations. During the workshop, students will work on three paintings at once on 12″ x 12″ inch cradled panels.
Material list:
- Three cradled panels (8×8, 10×10, or 12×12), covered with 3 coats of gesso prior to class
- Acrylic paints: black, white, and your choice of colors (a red, a yellow, and a blue). I like Liquitex or Golden fluid acrylics, but if you already have tubes of heavy body acrylics, that’s fine, too.
- Acrylic mediums: Acrylic gloss medium, regular soft gel (mat, gloss, or semi-gloss)
- Acrylic Brushes: 2” flat, 1” flat, ½” flat, a large round (optional). I like synthetic brushes. Also bring an old credit card, bowl scraper, silicon tools, if you have them.
- Mark making tools: a black Stabilo “Woodie,” other color Woodies (optional). #8 or #9 graphite pencil or charcoal pencil, scrapers, rubber stamps, bubble wrap, rubber self-liner, stencils, etc. Anything that can leave a mark in or on the paint.
- Paper towels or shop towels, Apron, Water container
Note: If you want to put your finished piece in the overflow sales tent, bring D-rings and wire to prepare your painting for hanging.
Sue Martin is an intuitive artist who takes inspiration from nature and interprets it through a painterly lens. Working in water media or oils, her paintings lean toward abstraction by exaggerating one or more of the elements of design (color, shape, line, texture, value).
Sue is a signature member of Utah Watercolor Society and Western Federation of Watercolor Societies. She holds a BFA degree from the University of Utah. She works in a home studio as well as a shared studio in downtown Salt Lake City.
You can see more of her work at www.suemartinfineart.com. Or follow her on Instagram @suemartinartist.
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