Sheary Clough Suiter

“Exploration of new places inspires me,” says Sheary Clough Suiter. “I’m fascinated with the way connecting with one’s environment informs an artists’ choice of shapes, colors, and content.”

Born and raised in Eugene, Oregon, Suiter moved to Alaska in 1976 where she lived Alaska’s ‘Last Frontier’ lifestyle for 35 years, before her relocation to Colorado in 2011.

A former dental hygienist, Alaska fishing lodge owner/operator, travel planner, literary journal editor, and author, Suiter has pursued her visual art career since 1992.

Suiter works in an intuitive and direct manner, embracing the unexpected results of melting wax. Shape, color, pattern, and mark making are all strong design elements found in her work.

“I’ve found my true passion in encaustic. Working with wax is physical and just a little dangerous. I paint molten wax with a brush, fuse with an open-flame torch, and carve back into the hardened wax with knife-sharp tools.”

Awards recognizing her expertise in encaustic include a Permanent Collection Purchase by the Anchorage Museum of Art, a Rasmuson Foundation Individual Artist Project Award, an International Encaustic Artists Project Grant, and an Alaska State Council on the Arts Career Opportunity Grant, funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. More recently, Suiter enjoyed a month-long artist residency in Listowel, Ireland, where she painted, exhibited, and taught workshops.

Currently Ombudsperson for the non-profit arts organization International Encaustic Artists, Suiter is founder and past president of Alaska Wax, subsequently serving the organization on a national level as Chief Officer of Opportunities. When she’s not on the back-roads of America traveling and painting with her artist partner Nard Claar, Suiter teaches at Bemis School of Art, Colorado Springs Fine Art Center at Colorado College, and works from her Colorado Springs studio.

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