Having trained as a fashion designer, Susan worked for several years in London. Susan has always been interested in the natural world, particularly plants, which eventually inspired her current work as a professional botanical artist. She prefers to draw directly from life, where possible finding subjects in her garden and surrounding countryside. Coloured pencils used dry are her favourite medium because they can produce intense, subtle tonal depths as well as rich, translucent colours in a continuous working process.   Since beginning to exhibit in 1998, her work has gained many awards including two Royal Horticultural Society gold medals. She is an elected fellow of the Society of Botanical Artists and a past vice president. Her artwork is held in private collections in the UK and abroad as well as public collections. Her work appears in a number of books and has been commissioned for greetings cards and a museum. Susan’s first commissioned book, The Tapestry of Life: A Botanical Artist’s Miscellany was published in May 2024.   Teaching is an enjoyable part of her practice. As well as running country-wide workshops and residential courses, Susan was the first coloured pencil tutor for the Society of Botanical Artists’ Distance Learning Diploma Course.