Susanne Woodward

I recently submitted two egg tempera paintings to the Gilda Snowden Memorial Exhibition at the Scarab Club, juried this year by Taurus Burns . The submitted works are: What the Mirror Refused Egg tempera on panel 8 x 10 inches 2025 Held Together by Looking Egg tempera on panel 10 x 8 inches 2025   Both pieces continue my interest in portraiture as something beyond likeness. I’m drawn to the face as a place where emotion, memory, perception, and identity meet. These paintings are small in scale, but I wanted them to hold a quiet intensity through layered marks, shifting structure, and close attention to expression. Egg tempera remains an important part of that process for me. Its layered, tactile surface allows the image to develop slowly, with revision and accumulation staying present in the final work. I’m grateful to have these paintings considered, and especially honored to submit work to an exhibition that carries forward the legacy of Gilda Snowden . Juror results will be...

   I'm happy to share that all three of my submitted paintings were accepted into the Student Art Show at Articipate in Berkley, Michigan. This show invites artists to share work created while learning something new — and for me, that meant working with egg tempera for the first time. Tempera requires a slow, layered approach, and these portraits reflect that shift in pace and mindset. Each piece was part of my process of experimentation — figuring out not only the medium, but also how to listen more closely to the quiet presence of a figure as it develops. 🗓️ Exhibition Details: Student Art Show * 📍 Articipate Studio, 3833 Twelve Mile Rd, Berkley, MI 🖼 Exhibition Dates: November 2 – December 2, 2025 🎉 Opening Reception: Sunday, November 2, 3–5 PM You can view more about the show here: articipate.us/exhibitions Thanks to the team at Articipate for the opportunity to be part of a show that celebrates exploration, growth, and creative risk. Accepted Works: What the Lig...

Second Hand Light is a visual dialogue between human creation and machine interpretation — a series of paired works that trace the fragile space between presence and imitation. Each piece begins with a hand-drawn or painted study: rough, searching, alive with the rhythm of mark-making. These human originals are then reimagined through AI, which translates gesture into pattern, texture into algorithm, emotion into understanding. The project examines how technology mirrors and mutates the language of touch. It’s not a contest of skill, but a meditation on translation — how light, form, and feeling shift when filtered through two ways of seeing. In the human works, we sense the warmth of imperfection, the intimacy of process. In the AI versions, we encounter reflection without friction — art distilled into calm precision. Together, these pairs create a conversation about authorship, empathy, and the body’s presence in image-making. Second Hand Light asks what remains — and what is los...

  Me                                                  AI Both portraits capture affection, yet they speak in different tongues. The painted version moves with energy and uncertainty, each mark an act of trust between intention and accident. The AI’s rendering absorbs that motion, offering tranquility instead of tension. One shows love as movement — the small chaos of connection — the other as memory, softened by distance. Between brush and breath, both seek the same truth: to hold what can’t be held for long.

  Me                                           AI Two portraits of innocence: one painted in the immediacy of feeling, the other refined by digital patience. The human work vibrates with presence — a celebration of texture, light, and imperfection. The AI version preserves the form but loses the friction, turning motion into memory. Together, they trace the line between expression and understanding — where art is not only what’s seen, but what resists being smoothed away.

      Me                                                       AI Both figures inhabit the same repose, yet their stillness carries different weight. The hand-drawn piece moves in its own restlessness — a record of searching touch, where every mark listens. The AI’s version refines that energy into balance and design, trading vulnerability for precision. Between them, a quiet question lingers: is rest the absence of motion, or the trace it leaves behind?