In 1969 I landed in Costa Rica after a Peace Corp stent In Bolivia. Following an extensive search for land to homestead, including a trek by bus back to Bolivia and Brazil for the same purpose, I settled on a parcel on a mountain top near Santa Cruz. There was a cabin, spring water (still in the spring), no road (horses only) and no electric. I loved it and thought that it was perfect for a girl raised in Oklahoma with illusions of pioneer life. This much loved, primitive lifestyle lasted a couple of years before I moved to the San Jose area and took up watercolor painting. I then spent the next four years in a cabin above San Jose de La Montana, painting landscape, and showing my work in galleries in the city. Exhausted by hauling paintings up and down the mountain, I rented an apartment in Barrio Amon as a base, four blocks from the super market, and for the next ten years traveled around Costa Rica, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala painting and exhibiting my art
The artwork changed during this period and what began as representational became non-representational as I begin to work from sketches and eventually gave up painting on site and moved into the studio. In 1992 I decided to move back to the States, I had two children by now, by parents were aging and I needed to think about the future. I moved to Southwest Missouri where I had a farm and a sister. I went to graduate school at the University of Arkansas and started painting, but soon found a new focus; sculpture. I received an MFA in 1996 and the next fifteen years were spent working on roughhewn, wood assemblages for public places. A major achievement was a Commission for the Lewis and Clark Memorial in Kansas City in 2005.
I still live on the Missouri farm and teach college art part time. I have become interested in ceramics and also do watercolor painting on a regular basis. The last few years I have returned to Costa Rica to paint and renew acquaintances. In December of 2015 and Jan of 2016 I painted in Curi Cancha Reserve in Monteverde and near Playa Grande in Guanacaste.
Susana Jones Jan. 2016