(photo by Thor Carlson)

Biography

Susan Erikson Hawkins is an artist native to Southern California who lives and works in Long Beach. Her figurative sculptures in polychrome plaster, bronze, terracotta, and steel evoke a sense of turbulent motion and inner conflict. She began her formal training as a painter at the age of eight and then turned to sculpture in her mid-twenties. She has exhibited throughout Southern California. She has pieces in corporate, academic, and private collections, throughout the United States including that of California State University Long Beach -University Extension Services. She has taught sculpture at California State University, Long Beach, The Academy of Art College, and Fullerton Community College.

Susan holds a Masters Degree of Fine Arts in sculpture and a Bachelors Degree of Fine Arts in drawing and painting from California State University, Long Beach.

Susan’s recent work is comprised of sculptures based mostly on the female form. The artist’s intention is to work within the tradition of figurative sculpture to create pieces that refer to the past while asserting their relevance to the present. In earlier pieces, the titles were chosen from classical western mythology in reference to the tradition of classical western sculpture.  Influences for these pieces were the sculptures of ancient Greece, Edgar Degas, Deborah Butterfield and Stephen DeStaebler.

Susan’s sculptures are developed as a progression of experiments with the chosen media, in which the discoveries made in each piece formed the basis for further experimentation in subsequent works.  The artist utilizes the unique properties of the material to create an integration between the structural and aesthetic development of the sculptures.  A particular focus is the incorporation of color into three-dimensional forms.  In early pieces the color was topical.  In later works, color becomes a light source, woven inseparably into the form.