Meet Susie

I’ve spent a lifetime learning to see differently.

I’m Susie McColgan. I’ve been painting since I was nine, but somewhere along the way, art became about much more than what I could put on a canvas. It became a way of finding light, connection and possibility—even when life looked nothing like I expected it to.

My first oil paints came from my grandmother, who handed me her painting box when I was nine. At that age, I painted without fear. I learned to work wet-in-wet, to let color speak where shadow might have been, and to trust the paint without overworking it.

Eventually, instinct was joined by education and experience. I earned my BFA in Fine Arts from the University of Michigan, with a minor in Psychology and Art in Healing, and began my professional career as an Art Director, producing award-winning illustration and design work across Michigan.

But painting remained the place I kept returning to.

Through color, light and composition, I learned to create work that could do more than depict something beautiful. A painting could stir a memory. Shift a feeling. Offer peace. Create connection. Sometimes it could bring something to the surface that words simply couldn’t.

Then life changed the way I saw everything.

In 2019, a near-death accident began a year of surgeries, rehabilitation and relearning. When I returned to the studio, I didn’t return as quite the same artist—or the same person.

Creating became an act of gratitude. Of resilience. Of possibility.

My work has since found its way into private, corporate and healing spaces, with commissions for clients including General Motors, Lee Iacocca, Tom Brady and Chrysler Corporation, as well as Arts in Healing programs throughout Michigan hospitals. But regardless of where a painting ultimately lives, what matters most to me is what happens between the work and the person standing in front of it.

And now, something is changing again.

For most of my life, I’ve known how to direct a painting. I understand color theory, composition, technique and the tools I’ve spent decades learning to use.

Now I’m interested in what happens when I loosen my grip on all of that.

I’m painting more intuitively. More instinctively. Allowing emotion, movement and whatever is happening inside me to enter the work before my conscious mind decides where it should go. The knowledge is still there—almost like a net beneath me—but I’m learning to trust myself enough to jump before I know exactly where the painting will land.

It feels vulnerable.

It feels exhilarating.

And it feels more personal than anything I’ve created before.

This is where it gets personal.