August Bouquet Painting

The first third of Susi's life was spent as a professional jazz vocalist & fashion model, touring the country; after the births of 3 children, they toured with her until the oldest became school age, then she limited performance regionally to New England. Realizing she'd be raising her six children alone after a divorce, Susi enrolled in Nursing College and became an RN, working in that profession for close to 26 years until she retired. After her retirement she found a new passion, Painting, and began voraciously studying everything related to painting she could lay hands on. She is entirely self-taught and studies daily, voraciously. Since that time, Susi has gone on to win three international awards for her work; her work now hangs in six countries as well as a museum in Durango, Mexico. She was selected to contribute work to the popular TV show 'Extreme MakeOver:Home Edition' for their Warwick, RI project, and has been the subject of many New England regional newspaper & magazine articles as well as cable TV show appearances. Her work was featured annually on RI's PBS TV Art Auction for five years; she won 'Most Inspirational Woman' award from her appearance on the RI cable TV show 'Tea With Marie' and contributes artwork to multiple charities yearly. She exhibits both locally and regionally and participates in national exhibits such as the 'Landfill Art' project, which used auto hubcaps to create OOAK artworks to heighten consciousness about the dangers of landfills to the environment. Giving discarded objects ( such as blocks of wood from construction sites, old wooden windows, tin ceiling tiles etc) new life as Artwork is an Art sub-specialty Ms. Franco particularly enjoys & commits significant time to. Her work is available through many major e-retailers and she is a top-selling print-on-demand Artist. Susi owns a farm in rural New England where she maintains her studio for Fine Art & Oil Painting/Fine Art Marketing-Promotion Lessons/Workshops, Creative Writing Workshops-Artist Retreats and seasonally offers fresh artisanal food and cooking lessons under the auspice of 'the Baroness's Bounty', a seasonal 'slow-food-from-scratch' product line Susi developed. She is also the author of the book 'Angels With Stethoscopes' *, a non-fiction work about her Nursing career which has received highly favorable reviews and is available on Amazon.com as well as other online book retailers.