Welcome to the Sue Brenner Gallery website.
INTRODUCTION
This site is dedicated to Susan Carol Brenner, better known as Sue Brenner, a professional San Francisco artist from 1970 to 1984.
Sue was deeply into drawing from a young age. One focus was colorful Swiss folk dancers. This interest in foreign culture led to a year living in Switzerland as an AFS exchange student in her senior year of high school. As an adult she was mainly into painting portraits. She started out with oil paintings of her family members. By 1974 when she was teaching at Evergreen State College, she was diagnosed with a serious medical condition and subsequently most of her work from that point on were watercolor paintings, many of which were of Doctors who were treating her illness. Primarily using the techniques of photorealism, she created oil and watercolor paintings that expressed and communicated the spiritual qualities of her subjects. Sue broke new ground on the kind of realistic detail possible with watercolor painting. In addition, she created photographs, lithographs and pencil drawings. She related to her art, first as total person and then as a woman. She thought it was impossible to separate one’s culture from one’s art. In addition she taught art at both the community level and academic institutions. Sue was also an early advocate for the promotion of female created art. She had many exhibitions, both locally and other locations in the United States. Sue continued to paint for 10 years after her diagnosis despite an early prognosis predicting her having only 3 to 9 months to live. Her short career ended at the age of 40, in 1984 with her passing. Remarkably a few months prior she was able to attend a retrospective reception of her life’s work at California College of Arts and Crafts Graduate Gallery, Oakland California. She relished dialoging with many of the subjects of her painting and enjoying the recognition that her life’s work was getting.
EARLY LIFE
Sue was born in the District of Columbia, July 7th, 1944, relocating to west coast as a child. She started seriously drawing at an early age and continued that passion into adulthood.
EDUCATION
B.A. – Art University of California, Los Angeles, 1968 M.A.- Art, California State University, San Francisco 1970
CAREER
Self-employed artist
Instructor at Various Community Art Centers
Artist-in-Residence, Evergreen State College, Olympia Washington, 1973-1974
EXHIBITIONS
University of California, Davis; Pasadena Art Museum; San Francisco State University; Richmond Art Center, Richmond California; Berkeley Art Center; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Baxter Art Gallery, Pasadena; California State University, Fresno; The Evergreen State College; Olympia, Washington; Women’s Art Center, San Francisco; Michael Wells Gallery, New York; Downtown Art Center, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Oakland Museum of California; and the California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, California.
PUBLICATIONS
MODERN PHOTOGRAPHY, September 1970 Ms. MAGAZINE, January 1973