March 12, 2024
Susan Mains is a self-taught artist with a formal background in education. For more
than 40 years she has explored in paint and installations the intricacies of the Caribbean in landscapes, people scapes and social interactions. Since 2002 she has operated the Susan Mains Gallery in Grenada, opening a showroom in Calliste in 2019, Art House 473.
She has exhibited world wide, and in 2020 she was awarded with the British Empire Medal from Queen Elizabeth for services to art. She has been the Commissioner for the Grenada Pavilion at la Biennale di Venezia for seven consecutive editions and has also curated other international exhibitions of Grenada’s art. She believes that art has social and economic power, but just like any natural resource, needs investment for the rewards to be fully realized.
As a child she lived in Barbados, and certainly Barbados has become a centre of collectors of her work. Hotels, Corporates and individual lovers of art have connected with her work. Perhaps it is the power of DNA. William Vassall, her 8th great grandfather, first came to Barbados in 1648, and later his son married in to the Graham family. Together they purchased a plantation in Grenada, now Westerhall estate. From her home in the hills of
St. Paul’s Susan can look down on these lands. There is a portrait painting of William Vassal collected in the San Francisco museum of art. Susan hasn’t seen it in person. Yet.
Susan lives and works in St. Paul’s Grenada, under the watchful eye of Morne Gozo.