About Artist
Susan K. D'Alessio working in her studio in the East Falls section of Philadelphia
Susan has been an artist her whole life.
Upon completing a successful 35-year career as a jewelry designer and goldsmith, she entered the Certificate Program of The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) to study painting. After graduating from PAFA in 2012, she began exhibiting her work at the yearly Philadelphia Open Studio Tours (POST) and at the Cerulean Arts Collective in Philadelphia where she is currently a member.
As an admirer of the American Abstract Expressionists painters since her days as an undergraduate student at Grinnell College in Iowa, Susan is a committed abstract artist working with fabric and paper collage as well as acrylic and oil.
Drawing on her years of experience as a jewelry designer, her training at PAFA, and her observation of the world around her as she commutes between her home and studio in Philadelphia, Susan creates abstract non-representational paintings and collages. Working intuitively with no fixed idea for the end result, she begins with one shape and continues to add other shapes one by one to build a work full of movement, color, and depth. While mindful of the principles of composition and color, she stays open to accident and chance. The results are sometimes quirky and strange but always interesting.
Susan often creates works in a series. The Tom's Fire paintings of 2017 are a memorial to her brother, Tom Klein. The 2018 series of fabric collages Arleen’s Colors are a tribute to the creative quilt making career of her friend, Arleen Weinstein. Most recently, her work has been inspired by the political and societal events that are taking place in our country.