An artist for more than 30 years, Huska began painting professionally in 1999. “Painting for me is like meditation,” Huska says, her voice at times betraying a Texas twang and at others the time she spent in Mexico. “It’s a way for me to release.”
Texas to Alaska
Huska was born and raised in Texas but finished high school in Anchorage, Alaska, where her family moved in 1963. She excelled in art and eventually an instructor suggested she study it abroad.Although she welcomed the tropical climate of Mexico (“Those long, cold, dark Alaskan winters … I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.”), the would-be painter was nervous about the move. She half-jokingly says her decision to move was solidified when the boy she liked asked her identical twin to senior prom. “That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she says, with a laugh. “I was always in her shadow, so maybe it was an excuse to get out of it.”
Huska enrolled at the University of the Americas in Mexico City, aiming to become a political cartoonist. She studied there until her plans changed when she became a single mother of four. “I would have loved to have kept on painting, but it was a real shot in the dark,” she says. “I couldn’t be a starving artist and raise a family. They were my top priority.”
Huska became an English teacher at her childrens’ school. Around this time she completed a smattering of paintings — mostly sketches with pastel and oil chalks. She put off full-time painting until 1990, when she moved with her four children from the “huge problems of the big city to the little village of Cabo San Lucas in Baja California Sur, Mexico.” Oil was her paint of choice. She found that the colors blended the best and allowed for more trial and error.
“With oil, if I try something and it doesn’t come out right, I can go back and correct it,” Huska explains. “I found that acrylics didn’t hold true, and with water colors you must get it right with the first stroke. Oils are very forgiving.” In the small villages, she found a culture that would inspire her earlier paintings, which were primarily of impoverished women. “Times were really tough and so were the poor women I saw,” Huska recalls. “They were struggling and toiling, but they always managed to stay upbeat. They didn’t sit around and whine about what a rotten deal they got.”
Mexican painter Diego Rivera’s style is mirrored in many of Huska’s paintings, which takes a cue from his flourishing brushwork and rich color. “Mexicans are a very colorful people,” she says. “Culturally, they’re just very happy people and the clothes and buildings are bright. My paintings wouldn’t have been authentic if they didn’t have strong, bright colors.”
Huska was inspired by Rivera’s nationalistic paintings, not for their ideological tinge, but for the depiction of strong women (soldaderas) fighting alongside the men during the Mexican Revolution. “It was the strength of the women I admired,” she says. “I kind of resent that women are often presented as these fragile, delicate beings. A lot of times, these women were hefty and carrying flowers, but they were incredibly strong.”
Despite her nod to strong women and her early aspirations to be a political cartoonist, Huska doesn’t inject her paintings with politics. “I think I’m past political statements,” she said. “One thing I’ve learned in life is that people very seldom change their political views. So, if I can make people enjoy life a little bit more, then that’s my contribution.”
Transition to the Valley
Huska moved to the Valley in 1999 to live near her daughter and quickly cottoned to the area’s rustic allure. She enjoys painting oak trees, barns, windmills and small churches. She toned down her strong colors when she started painting the Valley, letting the landscapes dictate the hues of her work.“The style of my portraits didn’t carry over into my new paintings,” she says. “Some painters like to embellish a little by pronouncing colors or adding them, like making a tree purple. But I love Mother Nature, and I didn’t want to try to improve on something that is already perfect.”
That’s not to say Huska has given up on painting women. They just aren’t as obvious to the casual eye. “All of my new paintings have naked ladies somewhere in them,” she says, before pointing to a painting of an oak tree that has within it the curvatures of a woman.
“I’ve always wanted to paint women, but the market wasn’t there,” she says. “So when I started painting landscapes I thought to myself, Mother Earth is a woman so why not?” Huska says only a few friends were aware of her “strange signature” and for fear of offending, she left it at that. But those who find out about the ladies in her landscapes came to appreciate the paintings as whole, she says.
“Sure, if someone knows there’s a naked lady they may stop and look,” she says, with a smile. “But to me they aren’t sexual objects; they represent the flesh and bones of Mother Nature.” When asked why the women were nude, she replies: “I didn’t want to give them a cultural end. You take off that little shell and you see that we’re all the same.”
Despite her decades of experience, Huska continues to evolve and grow. She currently paints from photographs and hopes to do plein air — taking the canvas outdoors. “I’m not that fast,” she admits. “I’ve sat there and the shadows start moving and I’m like, Stop! Stop! I’m not quite ready to move on.” Two of Huska’s paintings are currently on display at Dennee’s in Santa Ynez. The next time she’ll hang new paintings for an exhibit will be at New Frontiers in September 2010, after she finishes traveling.
Huska will spend the next year in Columbia and Argentina, but as a traveler. “I’m worried I’ll take a spill and lose my ability to walk, so I want to get traveling out of my system,” she says. “I don’t plan on painting.” When she returns, Huska says she’ll continue to use the Valley as a source of inspiration for her oil paintings.
“I chose the Valley because of the natural and rustic elements,” she said. “The wellspring of inspiration never dries up here.” Visit her website at suzannehuskasart.com
jfoster@syvjournal.com