Suzanne Murphy

In 2008, Suzanne Murphy created Open Sky Studio & Gallery in Tarpon Springs where she paints and exhibits. She has been teaching there and at the Tarpon Springs Recreation Center in Craig Park for the last nine years. Until a few years ago, she was on the Faculty at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center and served on the Board of the Tarpon Springs Public Art Committee which directs the city’s Public Art Program.

A Kansas City native, she began her artistic career in black and white as a fashion illustrator in Kansas City where she studied at the Kansas City Art Institute. She pursued the pure, dynamic line of pen and ink as a graphic artist when she moved to New York City in 1976.

Suzanne took classes at the Art Students League of New York and studied costume, set and lighting at the Polakov Studio and Forum of Stage Design. She considers the bounty of art museums and galleries in New York to be her most valuable education and inspiration as a painter.

But only after moving to Colorado in 1993, did she begin to paint on canvas. Using rich colors lit by an Impressionist’s attention to the movement of light and shadow, she evolved as a Contemporary Realist. Her paintings create a heightened sense of place and time, and she hopes that her images arouse a feeling of well-being and bring viewers closer to the stillness and beauty in their own lives.

In 2018, Suzanne welcomed Artist and Poet, Percy Kleinops as a Studio Partner at Open Sky Studio & Gallery. Find them in Campus Run Plaza, 907 Klosterman Road, Tarpon Springs, Florida. Visit their online shop at Handwords “Message from the Heart” 

Suzanne is a member of PAVA (Professional Association of Visual Artists), NOAPS (National Oil & Acrylic Painters Society), Dunedin Fine Arts Center and Morean Art Center in St. Pete. Subscribe to her Art Blogs and Newsletters