Susan Osgood CAREER NARRATIVE

Painting and drawing are like traveling; they continually give me the sense of being in unfamiliar territory and the wonder of discovery.

Growing up in rural New Hampshire, I dreamed of seeing the world beyond. Since 1985, each winter I have worked as an epigraphic artist for the University of Chicago’s Epigraphic Survey in Luxor, Egypt. I examine the walls of pharaonic temples, copying their carved and painted reliefs. I find inspiration in the everyday: living and working with scholars from around the world as well as with Egyptians who speak only Arabic, breathing the dusty yellow “khamseen” winds of the desert, dreaming in Arabic – these are my divergent worlds full of cultural contrasts and similarities that continue to fuel me.

The other nine months I am in my Vermont studio, using this source, moving it into another realm - translating ancient stimulus into abstract contemporary artwork.

In 2009 a solo exhibition of both my archaeological and my contemporary artwork will open at the Egyptian Museum of the University of Bonn, Germany and it will travel to the August Kestner Museum in Hannover, Germany in 2010.

In 1993 I was awarded an artists grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. The culminating body of paintings and drawings became an exhibition, traveling to six major cities in Germany. Preceding grants were from the Vermont Council on the Arts in 1992, the Gottlieb Foundation in 1991, Change, Inc. in 1990, and Money for Women in 1989.

I was guest lecturer for Marlboro College in 2007; American University in Cairo in 2005 and 2001; the Robert Hull Fleming Museum in Burlington, Vermont; the Art Institute of Chicago School’s Egypt Study Trip in 1996; Wellesley College in 1993 and 1989.

I was an artist in residence at Yaddo Artists Colony in 1991 and at the Vermont Studio Center in 1988 and 1985. I graduated with honors in painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1978 and was awarded scholarships throughout my four years there.

My art work has been featured in Art das Kunst Magazin, Germany, 2009, Harpers Magazine in 2007; on Canadian TV and Radio Cairo in 2003; in the 2000 collection catalogue: Kunstsammlung der Stadt Gerlingen; Maine Public Radio in 1989; on the covers of nine poetry/prose reviews over the past twelve years. My work is in national and international collections.