Susan's illustrations for the children's market are often sparked with an imagination that is hoped for every child's world of adventure. And for a world that she hopes is still in many adult's vision of what their life could still include. Dancing hippos and elephants go side by side with pigs and monkeys doing the jig. Pumpkin characters enjoying a joke with a good witch. Or even unlikely pairs savoring particular good times had by all.
Mediums used by Susan are often colored pencil, graphite pencil, colored inks, and pen.
Images provided by Susan Houldin. All rights reserved.
Custom House Ornaments are a 3-d replica of your house, church, town building, ect. Susan has created over 500 of these small works of art one at a time. Each ornament includes details such as the roof, stones, brick, siding, landscape. Susan's specialties include matching the colors of the stones from the original photo to the clay ornament. Her love of architecture and landscape design show through in every detail.
Susan had many repeat customers for over the past 10 years while selling these wonderful custom ornaments through her Etsy shop. As of August 2023, Susan is putting the creation of these wonderful ornaments on pause.
Susan sculpts the ornament out of polymer clay and adds pastel powder for added definition.
A Custom House Ornament can be used to commemorate a special occasion such as a first home, a realtor's closing gift to a new home owner, an anniversary, a childhood home, a church, a school, reunion.
Questions are encouraged.
Images provided by Susan Houldin. All rights reserved.
Copyright 2018. Original by Susan Houldin. Please don’t use this image as your own for reprint. Contact Susan Houldin.
Though colored pencil art is often mistaken for a lesser medium than others, there is often a lot of movement that can be achieved with using this medium. Susan enjoys creating works of nature, abstract and figurative subjects. Currently, Susan is working on a drawing depicting baseball players in a minor league game.
Images provided by Susan Houldin. All rights reserved.
Damn at Lake Wyola.
Susan's cut paper illustrations provide a fluidity of movement and color through a language of their own. As Susan constructs each image, she is building in the abstract with both color and shapes.
One of Susan's favorite subjects is creating abstract guitars. Though she has many drawings of guitars, she has gone one step further in building them with paper.
Recently, Susan has started to explore the study of nature through cut paper compositions.
Images provided by Susan Houldin. All rights reserved.
This gallery consists of studies in black and white. Some are from sketch books, others are more complex works.
Images provided by Susan Houldin. All rights reserved.
Painting in acrylics with a brush or palette knife provides Susan with just a couple of tools that are needed to create a work rich in color, form and meaning.
The paintings here were part of a collaboration between Susan and the winners she chose for a contest held on www.talenthouse.com a few years ago. Among the five winners, four end result collaborations are shown here. Susan worked with musicians on what they would like see as a representation of their music. The first one shows interesting characters and animals walking through the trees. The musician, Pat O'brien (Band & Doe) out of Boston, MA was interested in several themes that included illustrations similar to the ones in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," the paintings of Salvador Dali, and some sort of precipitation. Susan found inspiration in the ongoing battle of funding a new library in her town. The painting was well received and Susan quite enjoyed painting this work.
The water lapping against the shore was painted for the musician, Raven Coleman. He was quite open to Susan's interpretation of his music and loved the end result. This painting includes many layers of cubed water flowing to the shore.
Next was a very active canvas that included a throw back to Salvador Dali again with a reference to the modern sidewalk art today. It was important for Susan to not over think the idea of sidewalk otherwise the composition would not work. This painting was indeed a puzzle as all the pieces eventually fell into place. The work was inspired by the music of the musician, Tabitha Vicens.
The fourth one was created for the rap artist, Ciph Boogie out of Brooklyn, NY. He was interested in having the idea of all the years he has been working toward his craft along with art inspired by that of the artist of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Ciph also thought a portrait would be great. Susan had not painted portraits in awhile but said sure she could do it.
Working with all the musicians was a great experience for Susan and she would be very interested in creating work like this again.
Images provided by Susan Houldin. All rights reserved.
Work in gift ware started when Susan created miniatures for the dollhouse which she is still pursuing today. Several years ago, Susan started creating ornaments for the holidays. She has been selling them at the Cambridge Artist's Cooperative in Harvard Square, Cambridge MA for over 15 years. And most recently on her Esty shop (www.etsy.com/people/sbhdesign).
These often whimsical creations are all created out of polymer clay. Some other added features include the use of pastel powder that is brushed on and wire to add movement to the pieces.
The ornaments are all imagined in what Susan thinks may appear in a smaller world where play, color, movement and carefree days of creativity rule.
Images provided by Susan Houldin. All rights reserved.
Cambridge Artist's Cooperative, Harvard Square, Cambridge, MA - 2000-2018
Holiday Ornaments.
Images provided by Susan Houldin. All rights reserved.
June 12, 2021 was the first Kingston Design Day event held at Herzogs, Kingston, NY. Sponsored by Herzog's, Kingston Design Connection & Benjamin Moore paint. My work of an abstract guitar was one of three chosen winners. Each work will hang inside the store before being donated to a local non-profit.