In her decades-spanning practice, Susan Kay Handau has explored nature and aged environments through varied materials and mediums.
Handau, who has a BA in Art History, began exploring abstract art using watercolors.
In her early work in the 1990s, she created textured layers of collaged watercolors. By strategic cuts from her large abstract watercolor paintings and reconstructing the parts into smaller compositions secured by thread; she created layered landscapes while highlighting built up texture.

Handau later experimented with assemblage using wax and fibrous materials to build three-dimensional pieces out of a flat substrate. She currently works in acrylic, inks, and plaster to render nature in an abstract way.

Handau is an Individual Artist Grant recipient from the Nevada Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts; awarded a project grant in Fiscal Year 2023 for her works on demystifying aging. Her series, My Tribe: In Our Aging World, was on exhibit
at the Washoe County Administrative Complex from September through December 2023.

Handau’s artwork has been shown in exhibitions in the United States and in
Western Europe. In September of 2023 and 2022, she was an exhibitor at Reno Tahoe International Art Show. May of 2022, Handau showed in a two-person exhibition, Blending of Two Minds, at Nevada Fine Arts Gallery. She participated in a three-person 2021 show, Led by Vision at the Sierra Arts Foundation’s Riverside Gallery. Her work was featured on Reno’s PBS “ARTEFFECTS” and has been picked up nationally on other PBS stations.

In 2015, Handau was featured as a demonstrating artist and received an Honorable Mention in painting from the Beverly Hills Art Show, a juried art event that rewards
artistic excellence, in Beverly Hills, California.

Handau is a member of 1Berkshire and Art in the Berkshires. She is represented by the Singulart Gallery and Saatchi Gallery. Recently, one of her paintings was featured in a curated collection on Saatchi’s online gallery. Handau currently lives and works in The Berkshires of Western Massachusetts.