Susan Dorothea White was born in Adelaide in 1941 but spent her childhood in Broken Hill where her family encouraged her to make art.
She is a painter, sculptor, and printmaker with an exhibiting career spanning 50 years. Her solo exhibitions include New York (1998), Cologne (1991), Amsterdam (1990), Munich (1980), Sydney (1977, 1978, 1979, 1982, 1983, 1986), Adelaide (1972), and Broken Hill (1962). Since 1980 White has represented Australia in over 60 international group exhibitions (biennales, triennales) in USA, Germany, Japan, Italy, Spain, Brazil, China, Hungary, Poland, Canada, Yugoslavia, USA, and UK. White has also participated in group shows in Washington, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Berlin, Nice, New York, Amsterdam, and Geneva. In Australia she has participated in over 180 group exhibitions, which include the Wynne Prize, Sulman Prize, the Portia Geach Memorial Portrait Award, and the Blake Prize.
White is author of Draw Like Da Vinci (2006) illustrated with over 100 of her drawings; also published in Danish (2006), Hungarian (2006), and French (Dessiner à la manière de Léonard de Vinci, 2007).
Education and early career: Full-time studies, South Australian School of Art, Adelaide, 1959-60, where she was a prize-winning student; full-time studies continued at the Julian Ashton Art School, Sydney, 1960-61 with additional studies in sculpture at The National Art School under Lyndon Dadswell. She began exhibiting in 1957 and from 1958 received awards in Broken Hill where in 1962, aged 20, she held her first solo exhibition showing paintings, lithographs, etchings, and drawings.
Major collections with her work include: Buhl Collection, New York; International Arts & Artists – Hechinger Collection, Washington DC; Museum of International Contemporary Graphic Art, Norway; Gallery of Modern Art, Lublin; Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, Victoria; Westmead Centre, Sydney; and The National Gallery of Australia which holds 27 of her prints (1960-1996), including The Death of St. Francis of Australia 1982 (the artist’s aunt feeding possums and birds, in an oval wreath of gum blossoms) and Thelma of Wilcannia 1983 (woodcut of Aborigines dancing to radio, on the desert floor).
Significant works are: paintings The First Supper 1988, The Seven Deadly Isms 1992, The Seven Deadly Sins of Modern Times 1993, Me After Brain Surgery 1997, Menopausal Me in a Saucepan Lid, Warts 'n All, with Everything, including the Kitchen Sink 2001, and sculpture assemblages: It Cuts Both Ways 1998, Next-Door Neighbours 2000, and Lost for Words 2003. The large bronze Stretching the Imagination was commissioned by the Buhl Collection in 2005.
- Writers:
- Susan Dorothea White
- Date written:
- 2009
- Last updated:
- 2018
