The Art Club is delighted to award Artist of the Month for March to Susan Gleason.
Susan was born in New York and raised in Arlington, Va., where she met Brian Gleason, her husband of more than 50 years. She studied fashion design at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology and spent several years coordinating fashion shows and doing illustration for a major department store in Washington, D.C. In the early 1970s, the Gleasons moved to Berlin, Germany. The Berlin Wall was an ever-present part of their daily lives, and her experiences there made a profound impact on her.
Upon returning to the U.S., they settled on the California west coast, first in Santa Monica, Calif., and then in Marin County, where they lived for more than 40 years. After the birth of their second son, Susan returned to work in San Francisco, embarking on a career in leasing. She specialized in the leveraged financings of commercial aircraft, work that took her to the Caribbean, South America, Canada, Europe, Australia, and the Far East. She and her husband traveled twice to Africa on safari, and her love of Africa is often reflected in her artwork.
Susan retired from a hectic work life in the late 1990s and, fascinated with the emergence of personal computers, explored the world of software. She identified a need for a personal program to organize personal and financial matters, and over several years developed and wrote a software program with more than 250,000 lines of code. Susan is especially proud of this accomplishment. She has also authored two cookbooks and derives great pleasure from cooking and sharing dinner with friends.
Susan and Brian moved to Arizona in March 2013, and she feels very fortunate they found their way to PebbleCreek. Their sons visit frequently with their families from Portland, Ore. and Dublin, Ireland. She enjoys golf and cards with many friends here in Arizona.
The first year here, she joined the Irish Club, assisting in website design, graphic work, and its annual charity golf tournaments, and the Art Club, taking lessons in watercolor and colored pencil. She now dabbles in many different media but has a particular love for watercolor. She participates regularly in a watercolor critique group and has won several awards in local shows for drawing, colored pencil, and watercolor. Drawing on her background in fashion design, she taught workshops in fashion illustration to John Balogh’s Saturday class and to her watercolor critique group.
She has been an active Art Club member, supporting the art shows and the club websites. She was honored with a lifetime membership in the club in 2020. She presently serves as vice president of online development and has recruited a team to assist in the ever-expanding online presence of the Art Club.
We hope you find time to enjoy Susan’s work, which will be displayed this month in the Creative Arts Center and at the Tuscany Falls and Eagle’s Nest Clubhouses.