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Story By Hazel Jump, Photos By Jodi Hutchison

A piece of lace, a cutwork linen cloth or a bowl of fruit become real with the stroke of Suzanne Churchill’s brush.

Churchill, a professional artist for more than 25 years, is a graduate of Jonesboro High School and Arkansas State University, where she received a degree in commercial art, specializing in painting.

Although she is primarily a watercolorist, Churchill occasionally works with acrylic, colored pencil, watercolor crayon or gouache, and has become well known for the intricate detail and realism evidenced in her paintings.
“I love the bordered lace pieces and the different kinds of cutwork,“ she says of her still life paintings, all of which are very detailed and realistic.

“I attempt to dramatically emphasize depth through color and contrast to allow the viewer to feel as if he could pick the object up off the paper,” Churchill says. “I love the challenge of painting reflecting objects like china, glass and silver, and I spend quite a bit of time searching for objects in just the right colors and textures.”

After obtaining her degree from ASU, Churchill worked as a graphic artist and illustrator. She also taught fashion design, color and drawing at South Central Career College, and for several years, owned and operated The Needle Tree, a local shop for serious needle workers, where she designed needlepoint and cross stitch patterns and hand-painted needlepoint canvases. She is still a member of the Embroidery Guild of America and participates in the local chapter that meets on the third Thursday of each month at the Jonesboro School Administration Building.

For the past 24 years, Churchill has done commissioned work from her home studio, and has become known for her painting of homes and buildings. Her house portraits are in homes of clients all over the country, from the East Coast to California, and throughout the South.

“I do 40 or 50 houses each year,” she says. “My house portraits are painted using photographs as references. I really enjoy working with my customers to plan their painting. We all cherishspecial memories of places from our childhood and other happy times. I enjoy helping keep these memories alive through my commissioned paintings of homes, buildings and landscapes that help us remember.”

In addition to the houses, Churchill accepts commissions of still life paintings.

A charter member of the Northeast Arkansas Visual Arts League, Churchill still participates in workshops and teaches privately. She has had her work shown in galleries in Little Rock, Memphis, Hot Springs, Eureka Springs and Jonesboro, where she and Jonesboro artists Mary Chambers and Brenda Heringer have a continuing display at Gotay Jewelry Design on East Nettleton Avenue. Their work will be exhibited there later this month in an open house celebration.

A solo exhibition of Churchill’s work is also scheduled for December at the Craighead Jonesboro Public Library, and she recently began teaching watercolor and drawing classes at the new St. Bernards Senior Center on East Washington Avenue.

Churchill recently returned from a reception held at the governor’s mansion in Little Rock in honor of Arkansas artists whose work was selected for inclusion in the 2008 Arkansas Artists Calendar Book, commissioned to benefit the Governors Mansion Association.
Her painting, “Freshly Squeezed,” brings a halved orange to life in the calendar painting.

Churchill and Jonesboro artist Teresa Hardin, who also had a painting accepted for the calendar, were among the guests greeted by Ginger Beebe, Gov. Mike Beebe’s wife.

“I felt honored,” Churchill says of her inclusion in the calendar, which is just one of many honors she has earned through the years.