Devastating Loves & Transcendent Hatreds : Susan R. Kirshenbaum : Women Together series: Love in Shades of Blue 

This piece is about the emotional and psychological tension balanced by familiarity and comfort. It is the "push me pull you" of love. To me, love is blue and I work with all shades of blue in my color palette. I think about the relationship of color with my emotions and what I see with my eyes closed. My results tend to be graphic, gestural paintings that express complex emotions and female sensibilities. As a feminist, it is important to me to convey a frankness which feels intimate and natural. My models are female identified, strong, confident individuals—and that's my underlying narrative. My subjects are usually naked but comfortable in their skins. I pose the question to my viewers: “Are you at home in your relationship?"

A long-time San Francisco resident, Susan R. Kirshenbaum is a dedicated member of the San Francisco Bay Area art community. She was encouraged to pursue art and photography from an early age as she studied and worked in her family's art school in Pittsburgh, PA, from age five to 25. She moved to SF where she continued her art studies, met Jack (future husband), and they moved to Hawaii, then NYC before returning to the Bay Area. Susan enjoyed a fruitful career as a creative director for marketing and branding, eventually returning to her calling as a full-time artist in 2016. Her work has won numerous awards, and she exhibits regularly as well as curating exhibitions. Susan served on the San Francisco Women Artists’ Board of Directors as Exhibitions Director for the last five years and currently serves as its Chair for UCSF’s Serenity Art Series. In 2020 she founded The Invisibility Collective, an interdisciplinary social practice group of artists.