Suzanne Lee Chetwood AKA Suzanne DeSoleil is a contemporary artist whose amiable, vibrant paintings greet you with light and radiant color. As a very shy young girl growing up in the forests of Pennsylvania, she discovered that making art presented opportunities for her personality to shine through, offering ways to articulate her thoughts and feelings by means of line and color. Her parents nurtured her love of art—allowed her to draw all over a room in their home—and encouraged her to cultivate her creative skills. Her mom gave her step-by-step drawing pages, and at twelve her Dad set up a still life and taught her how to paint with oils. This foundation sparked a sense of well-being and freedom within her, an empowerment that accompanied her along the path toward her career and living the life of an artist. Stories from those that she encountered along the way are woven through her work, narratives of the human experience infused with the vibrancy and mysterious beauty of the natural world. With a penchant for colorful landscapes, she captures and interprets the kind of free-flowing, joyful moments where you can see light in everything. Chetwood studied fine art on full scholarship at the Pennsylvania Governor's School of Arts at Mercyhurst University, studied ceramics with Jack Troy at Juniata College, and then moved to Boise, Idaho where she received a BFA in painting and ceramics with a K-12 teaching certificate from Boise State University in 1999. She has attended multiple professional practice workshops and academies. Her work has traveled to international shows and exhibitions as well as museum exhibitions.