Susannah Mills

Artist Statement

Tragedy has taught me that transmutation of grief through artistic endeavor and service is my path. After I helped my mother transition into the great mystery in 2021 I became an End of Life Guide. When the Eaton Canyon fire destroyed my home, my artwork, and entire community in 2025 I applied for international artist residencies and landed at Björkö Konstnod (BKN) in the Northern Archipelago of Sweden in April. At the end of my stay I worked with Stockholm curator Anna Viola-Hallberg and created the Los Angeles Wildfire Survivors artist residency. I raised funds and returned to BKN in Sweden with 13 artist fire survivors selected from a pool of applicants. What resulted over our two month stay was astounding- several shows in Stockholm, a new grief community rooted in laughter and process, creative colloboration spanning dance to paintings to textiles to ritual, and ultimately a collective healing.

Transformative events can take us down, but they also have the power to recontextualize our lives and alter our direction in positive ways. This is where my art is rooted- in change, instability and growth. Through these traumas I have evolved from being a mostly watercolor painter into a multidisciplinary artist. I now make my own paper, using recyclable materials and elements from the natural environment. I draw, paint, and incorporate a Dada-inspired writing on a large scale with this paper using wood and linen, with an eye for sculpture, curation and installation.

My goal for residency is to work in a sustainable way with elements from the environment to create works on paper that act as a mirror for the colors, shapes and feeling of Place. In Sweden, my installations incorporated sleeves of fallen birch tree wood, ground flowers and grasses, water from the Baltic Sea, and monoprints from rocks. My new life in the desert allows me to creates paper that utilizes cactus pulp, found sun soaked relics, photography, wood and sand.

Every place has a signature. Color, tone, culture and the feeling of a land through local history research, visits with people, and going into thrift and vintage stores greatly inform my work. I plan to come away from residency with large scale sculptural works, an installation created with hand made paper, paint, ink, graphite, and found materials, allowing space for other mediums and growth in this new world.