“For the last five years, the outdoors of Oahu has been my studio. The energy of the land and water is my source of inspiration. I grab the essence of the moment and meld it with the footprint of the place.”
Sharon Sussman is a hybrid traditional/digital artist and animator. Prior to joining the faculty at Kapi’olani Community College in Honolulu, she worked at DreamWorks Feature Animation for six years. Her film credits include: Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Sinbad, Shrek, and Shark Tale. She previously taught digital art and animation as well as traditional drawing and painting at the University of California at Santa Cruz and San Jose State University, California. She worked as a freelance digital artist and animator for such companies as Adobe, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Intuit, Fractal Design and others. Sussman has shown her paintings nationally since 1990. Her first exhibition of digital images was at the Kodak Center for Creative Imaging in Maine in 1993. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree in painting from the University of California Santa Cruz and a Master of Arts degree in art (concentration in digital media art) from San Jose State University. She also studied independently for several years with Miguel Arguello, a Spanish realist painter. Sussman currently teaches computer animation at Kapi’olani Community College.
Sussman first showed her painting in Hawaii at the Artists of Hawaii exhibition at the Honolulu Academy of Art in 2002. Her awards include the Elizabeth Greenshield Foundation Grant for painting, a Daniel Smith Research Grant, and a Santa Cruz City Arts Commission Grant.
