Kasilof’s Susan Watkins has been a painter since first grade. During this Wednesday's presentation at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge Visitor Center in Soldotna, she recalled the first mural she created – an unfavorable chalk sketchup of her teacher. Watkins was forced to stay after school to wash it off.
Fast forward to today, and she’s painted hundreds of nature landscapes across the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska and the world. Watkins says much of her work reflects the geographic environment in which she’s painting.
“That’s what I like about my job, is everywhere, you find something beautiful in nature,” she said.
Originally from North Carolina, Watkins' background is in nursing. Her first large-scale painting was of a beach setting at a nursing home in Raleigh. Before she knew it, she was painting murals all over the hospital she worked at.
When she and her husband moved to Alaska in 2004, Watkins continued painting while working full time in health care. She says her two passions are helping people and creating art, which she often combines in her murals. One of her first paintings after moving to Alaska was inside a mental health facility in Anchorage.
“That was a way for the staff to use my work to deinstitutionalize, maybe detoxify the environment a little bit so that they could be taken away from a bad situation in their minds,” Watkins said.
Her artwork soon took the driver’s seat, and Watkins went on sabbatical to paint full time. She has murals at several medical facilities across Alaska, but one of her largest clients is Bass Pro Shop and Cabela’s. She’s crafted large paintings inside nine of their stores in the United States and Canada, including at the famed Bass Pro Shop pyramid in Memphis.
Although these large-scale paintings are usually commissioned on a deadline, Watkins says it’s a labor of love. She enjoys the community outreach aspect of painting, bringing the wilderness to people who might not have access to it.
Watkins reflected on a mural she painted at a Bass Pro Shop in Bridgeport, Conn., just outside New York City.
“You had these kids coming in off the street that didn’t even know there was a little park nearby with a waterfall in it, and there was all this nature," she said. "Next thing you know they were trading in their basketball shoes for hiking shoes. They were thinking about a whole world that was outside of their city blocks.”
Watkins’ work has also been displayed in art galleries and in businesses around the Kenai Peninsula. She recently completed a mural inside Jolly Wally’s fish processing in Soldotna, and in the entryway of Kenai’s Walmart. For that one, she painted in her studio and her work was transferred onto a floor-to-wall canvas.
Watkins says two of her favorite murals were painted in wildlife exhibits at the Wonders of Wildlife National Museum and Aquarium in Missouri. Among other places, Watkins is scheduled to paint in Costa Rica and at Dublin’s Plein Air Painting Festival in Ireland next year.
Her advice for budding artists is to continue creating.
“Don’t be afraid to just pick up a pencil or a paintbrush and go for it and try it," Watkins said. "The more you do it, the more you learn. Never feel intimidated about your own creations.”
You can see more of Watkins’ work by visiting her website.
The Kenai National Wildlife Refuge’s last Way of Knowing Wednesday presentation this month will be next Wednesday at 11 a.m. inside the refuge visitor center in Soldotna. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Tamara Zeller will discuss loons.
