Creators on Creating: Susan Murie

Resting Women Tapestry Cyanotype on Irish linen with paint and appliqué. 36 x 54 inches. 2022. On exhibit Fall 2025 at the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts.

Mystic III. Cyanotype on paper, acrylic medium, watercolor, gouache, pencil, pastel assembled with cyanotypes on paper. 38 x 24 inches. 2023-2025. On exhibit at the Copley Society of Art June 5 - July 3, 2025.

Voyage 12. Cyanotype and pencil on paper. 45 x 31 inches. 2022.

Untitled. Cyanotype on paper. 20 x 15 inches. 2011.

Poppies. 30 x 22 inches. 2020.

Your cyanotype artwork is gorgeous! Could you briefly explain how you go about making a cyanotype for readers who are not familiar with the process?

Thank you! Cyanotype is an antique photographic process. It involves coating paper or fabric with a UV light sensitive solution, placing an object or photo negative directly on the paper to make a contact print. It is then exposed to sunlight or indoor UV light, then washed in plain water to fix the image.

Could you share a bit about your background as a professional gardener? How has that intersected with or influenced your artwork?

I began working as a gardener really just by chance. I had my own garden and a friend asked if I could help with her garden and then by word of mouth more people asked for help and I had a gardening business! It was called The Traveling Gardener. My daughter was 8 or 9 at the time and she thought up the name. I did that for about 10 years and became engaged with plant structure, form, and movement. Flowers especially called to me. I have been an artist working photographic mediums for a long time. I began working with cyanotype around 2005. I think I was not feeling satisfied with the color work I was making. By chance I was reading Food and Wine magazine and there was a feature about a new restaurant in Georgia that had commissioned artist Rinne Allen to create a wall of plant cyanotypes. I don’t think I had seen cyanotypes before and I was immediately intrigued. So I bought some precoated paper and that was it, I was hooked. I used plants and flowers as my objects directly on the paper because it’s what I knew best and was inspired by Rinne’s work. As I researched about the history of this process, I learned that back in the 1840s botanist Anna Atkins began contact printing algae and other plants onto cyanotype coated paper and assembled her prints into books. So there is a legacy of making these prints of botanical subjects.

Do you have any favorite materials (e.g. kinds of leaves or flowers or items when making cyanotypes) to work with?

I photograph much of my material out on walks looking for beautifully lit plants and flowers. The lighting is of great importance to me. I am looking for natural light that captures a luminescent glow. I am also drawn to graceful forms. I love all sorts of flowers but especially poppies for their curving stems, roses for their petal structure, delphinium for their charm, and jasmine that I photographed at the Lyman Estate greenhouse in Waltham for the pattern of the flower shapes. I also work with certain papers and fabrics that help me bring out the luminosity I’m looking for. In the work that is on the cover of Translating Blue, I printed on a soft silk charmeuse which is especially fluid in its drape and has a slight sheen to it. I then hung and draped two of these prints on silk and photographed the result.

Do you have a philosophy, any guiding principles, or artistic mission when making art?

I make work to satisfy my search for compelling beauty in the natural world. Life is so difficult sometimes, I find I want to create my little corner of it surrounded by creativity and beauty. I guess I see art making and being in the studio as a kind of sanctuary. I want the work I make to have a certain level of luminosity. I also often work gravity into what I’m making by arranging the components in such a way to convey a downward movement. I don’t know for sure what that’s about but when I reflect on it, it could be my response to the natural world trying to tell us humans something important, that we have to care for our home here on earth or it’s going to get out of balance. I very often make a piece and then reflect on it after. There are other subjects in my work too such as vintage decorative objects, animals, fabric textures, and found objects.

What drew you to studying theater in college, then afterward, filmmaking and video?

Like many “theater kids” I found theater in high school and continued on with it as a major in college. I loved the communal aspect of it, making something with other people. You start with a script and then build this amazing live performance. Though it is hard work, there really is a magic to it also. I really thought I’d have a career in it but found after a couple of years in the trenches that the life wasn’t for me. I had always had a camera with me in college and was also interested in filmmaking. I took a filmmaking course at MassArt and then spent a few years making Super 8 art films. That segued into video production where I eventually ended up working for a community TV station teaching video. Around that time I started working with still photography. It’s been 40 years and here I am doing what I’m doing now.

How has being in a studio space nurtured your artistic practice?

It’s a room of one’s own, a sanctuary, a place where I can make a mess and set up the environment I want to work in. I used to work out of my bedroom using my bathtub to wash prints. I made work I was happy with that way, but moving to a studio changed things for the better. I was really able to focus, spread out and try things I just couldn’t do at home anymore. My daughter was grown by then but when you’re a parent to a young child your personal space gets pretty small! It’s a such a special time of life, but made time-consuming art making a challenge. I did what I could back then with the time and space I had, but eventually having a studio and the time to be in it was a huge shift.

You've been in the Boston art scene for over four decades. How have you seen it changing and how has your artistic practice evolved over the years?

I came into the city in 1978 looking to meet up with other creative people right away. I met musicians, visual artists, and performing artists. There were lots of grassroots art events and gatherings as well as events and connections made through the colleges. I was part of a group of artists that put together film nights at Gallery East, a space in the Fort Point area. I took a filmmaking class at MassArt and met other Super 8 filmmakers. Many of my friends were in bands, so much of my social life was going out to clubs where I eventually started filming local bands with my single Super 8 Elmo camera. Was I at the Underground when the ceiling came down during the Neats final set on the final night of the club’s existence? Yes, I was. The Rat. InSquare Mens Bar, Modern Cafe. Streets. The Blue Parrot. Old Cambridge Baptist Church. Boston Film and Video Foundation. Cantones. Places we could gather, create, eat and drink and rock out. In many ways the creative scene is the same today perhaps a bit less gritty and a lot more expensive. Dirty Old Boston was real! Being part of a wide ranging creative community influenced and enabled my trajectory as an artist. Boston still has a great arts community and I love being a part of it so much.

Could you share some of your influences as an artist?

I love films and live theater and dance. They enlighten and inspire me. As for visual art influences, the work of photographer Flor Garduño knocks me out. I have learned so much about lighting in particular from sitting with her work.

Do you have any advice for young artists?

Find your people. Keep learning and working. Pivot if a medium you’re working in isn’t giving you joy. Take in as much culture and new works as you can. Gather ye rosebuds!

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Susan Murie is an artist living and working in Boston, MA.

Recent exhibitions include CAA @ CANAL; Fort Point Arts Community Gallery; the Maine Museum of Photographic Arts; Photographic Resource Center, Boston; Cambridge Art Association; Mass Art Auctions; Abigail Ogilvy Gallery and Rhode Island Center for Photographic Arts. Her work has been featured in Art Scope Magazine, online; Podcast CyanUtopia; Boston Magazine - Boston Home; What Will You Remember Best Photo Picks; and INKQ, Inky Leaves Publishing, London.

Her work is in collections at Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collections, The City of Somerville, Raffles Hotel Boston, Bellagio Hotel Las Vegas, Ritz Carlton, San Francisco and private collections in the United States and Europe.     

Visit Susan's Website

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