trudy | https://myh.godaddy.com/#/hosting/mwp/v1/site/301161c6-8b11-4607-b30f-1fd8cec8a4f1

November 21, 1917 – August 24, 2001

Trudy Sutherland (Mum to her family), shown on the right, was actively involved in art projects for most of her life. She was an avid student and always excited about learning a variety of skills from both neighborhood friends and instructors at local art centers. It’s difficult to know how many paintings she created because many were given to her friends as gifts. However, the collection shown in this tribute highlights her love for art and offers some insight into her interests and experimentation with different painting techniques and mediums and later with sculpture. Where possible, a title, date of each piece and comments from the current owner is included.

It’s likely that Trudy found her interest in art soon after she was married in 1938 to Warren Sutherland since one of her best friends became a serious artist. Soon after Trudy’s first child, Anne, who was born in 1940, and Bob (now Scotty) came along in 1943, Warren was called up for Military duty in 1944. He served in the U.S. Navy and was honorably discharged in 1946. Although Warren was stationed in Jacksonville, Florida during WWII, unless there was a family emergency, military members did not take vacations. Being alone and caring for two young children in Newton, Massachusetts, she developed an interest in art and painting in particular, to help pass the time.

A third son, Don was born in 1946, followed by Jim in 1949, and Craig in 1952. By necessity, this growing family needed more space and around 1953, the family moved from a small three-bedroom, two-bath house to a huge (relatively) seven-bedroom, four-bath home with a large yard and lots of space only about three miles away. Soon after the move, another son Gary was born in 1955 followed by Todd in 1957.

Most importantly, this large home had a small second floor utility room with an attached sun room. These two room’s became Mum’s personal space and art studio. Her sister-in-law, Eileen Cunningham laughingly remembered all of the paint marks on the door leading to the sun room proving that it was probably Trudy’s favorite place to paint.

Once all of the kids were in school, Trudy had opportunities to take a lot of art lessons in the Newton area, at the Marion Art Center in Marion, Massachusetts, in Sarasota, Florida and finally in Natick, Massachusetts. During the time she lived in Mattapoisett, MA, before retiring to Sarasota FL, Trudy must have either met or took art lessons from Louis Silvia. Louis was a well known artist in the New Bedford/Fairhaven area. Two of the paintings in this collection were based on Mr. Silvia's work: "Cannon Street" and the "Whaleship Charles C. Morgan coming home".

While Trudy probably tried several different mediums, her favorite by far was watercolor as reflected by the paintings on this site. As Trudy’s skills evolved so did her decision to sign her works. It appears that the transition went from no signature, to “GCS”, “G Sutherland”, “GC Sutherland”, “Trudy Sutherland”, “Trudy S”, and finally just “Trudy”. On the three sculptures that we are aware of, Trudy just used “TS”.

Unfortunately, most of her art is undated, in part we are sure, because many of her works were stuck in a desk drawer and never framed. When asked about them years ago, she said, “Oh, they were not very good, I was just saving the paper to reuse the reverse side!”. Its amazing how creative matting and a nice frame can transform a “not very good” painting into a piece of art that is treasured by the owner.

As shown in this tribute, Trudy excelled in painting landscapes, seascapes, maritime scenes, flowers, and even some birds. In her pictures she experimented with different techniques from very soft and obtuse imagery to very crisp impressions of blades of grass on a sandy beach. She also took some chances with portraits of her grandkids, Emma and Eric, and her own picture as a young child based on a photograph. We don’t know what inspired her to paint the largest picture in her collection, “Gorilla”, but we think she had fun doing it and gave it to her youngest son, Todd. Perhaps what Trudy enjoyed the most was painting scenes that she knew the recipient of the work would relate to and enjoy.

Sadly, we have no photographs of Trudy actually in her own studio or art class - just a picture of her easel and paint brushes shown below. The only picture is one where she had a fairly large exhibit in 1989 (Trudy on the left with son Gary and his family). She was very excited about this exhibit because it was the only time where many of her pictures were on display at the same time.

Please look through the various tabs of this Tribute site and enjoy the memories we share and be amazed at the breadth of Trudy’s talents during a long artistic adventure.