Susan Dorothea White was born in Adelaide in 1941 but spent her childhood in Broken Hill where her family, especially her grandfather who was an amateur watercolorist, encouraged her to make art. When at boarding school in Adelaide she was able to take Saturday morning art classes with the Surrealist painter, James Cant. After leaving school in 1958 she enrolled in the South Australian School of Art where her teachers included Cant, Dora Chapman and Jacqueline Hick. In 1960 she had her first experience with printmaking when she was taught lithography by Udo Sellbach.
Her interest in classical drawing meant that in mid 1960 she moved to Sydney to enrol in the Julian Ashton Art School where she was taught drawing by Henry Gibbons. She also undertook extra classes in sculpture with Lyndon Dadswell at the National Art School.
She had been exhibiting with local and art school groups while a student, but in 1962 held her first solo exhibition at the Broken Hill Technical College. Following the exhibition she settled in Sydney where she rented a room and worked as a shop assistant for Grace Bros department store while she entered local art prizes. A painting was exhibited in the 1962 Waratah Art Prize.
Later that year she married Dudley Stuart Anderson and the couple moved to lodgings in Paddington. To make ends meet she became a shift worker selling newspapers at Wynyard station, then at a city bargain store.
The birth of her three children in 1964, 1965 and 1968 provided her with more intimate subject matter. In 1967 the family moved to a house in Glebe where she supplemented the family income by working as a dressmaker, sewing curtains for theatrical productions and making paper flowers, which she sold on the street from the baby’s pram.
Despite family circumstances and the less than supportive environment for women artists in this decade, she continued to make art. Inspired by traditional Chinese landscapes and the late works of JMW Turner she turned to painting half imagined places. Technically this approach was assisted by moving from oil painting to acrylic.
The marriage ended in 1971, and she once again was free to exhibit. In order to support her children, she worked as a waitress in the evening, painting when she could in her bedroom which doubled as a studio. She held her second solo exhibition at the Sydenham Galleries in Adelaide, during the 1972 Festival.
In 1973 with her new partner Dr Brian Freeman, a medical academic, the family moved to Annandale.
- Writers:
- Susan Dorothea White
- Date written:
- 2009
- Last updated:
- 2018
