Susan Terpning (Born 1953)

A resident of Silver City, New Mexico, Susan Terpning is a painter of
Plains Indian figures and their horses.  Her parents encouraged
her creativity from her childhood in Connecticut.  Her father, is
highly successful western painter Howard Terpning, whose commitment to
art was a major factor in her becoming a professional artist.  He
later became her teacher.

As a child, she continually drew
Indian subjects, but in college at Drew University in Madison, New
Jersey, she majored in anthropology and then married and moved to
Maryland from where she continued her anthropology interests by serving
as a guide at the Smithsonian Institution.  But she needed income,
so her father suggested she turn to painting upbeat or cheerful Indian
subjects in a highly realistic style.



She does her research in museums, from books and photographs, as well
as from participating in mountain-men rendezvous re-enactments where
she wears Plains Indian buckskin clothing she has made.

In 1978, she moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico.