By Rylie Friesen-
A local artist has been recognized with an award for a painting she says was inspired by a view across the street from her Citrus Heights home.
Sue Ballenger moved to Citrus Heights a few years ago with her husband, and her piece, “Reach for the Heights,” won a Juror Award in the landscape category of PBS KVIE’s 40th annual art auction.
While Ballenger has known about the KVIE auction for a while, this was the first year she entered her own artwork. She said the auction’s curator is a friend who helped give her the idea.
“There’s no time like the present,” she said with a smile in an interview Thursday. “I’m really glad I [entered]. I’m very grateful.”
The piece was inspired by the house across the street from where she lives. She took a picture, and did a few sketches. The next year she went outside and painted.
“I did around four or five versions of the painting,” she said. “I was standing out in front of my house, or across the street, or working from my sketches in the studio.”
She said in order to submit paintings to KVIE, two dimensional artwork had to be 16 by 20 inches, or larger. Ballenger had been painting on much smaller 6-inch squares, so she had to re-work her measurements.
“The first one did not work,” she said with a laugh. “I used to work larger all the time, but when I started working smaller, everything about it is different.”
Ballenger’s award-winning piece will be featured as part of this year’s art auction, a live three-day event that will showcase 266 works of art by “emerging, well-known, and world-renowned Northern California artists,” KVIE said in a news release. The auction will be broadcast on KVIE Channel 6 and online at kvie.org/artauction from Oct. 1-3, with proceeds going to support the channel’s local productions and community outreach.
The 67-year-old Ballenger has been painting all her life, and says she was known as the artist of her class.
“I think I was always just doodling,” she said. “If I was ever taking notes, I was also doodling.”
She said her high school art teacher influenced her greatly, recalling the amount of time he put into her art work. He bought one of her paintings when she had her first show after college.
Ballenger said while later working at the Sacramento Bee around 1990 she didn’t have much time to paint. Because of this she joined a “50-50 Show”, which ended up being her first gallery show in Sacramento. The artist would paint 50 paintings in 50 days on a 6-inch square.
“It was kind of freeing to work on something so quick and spontaneous,” she said. “The thing is, with something that is very small, you’re not investing a lot of time. I found I was really able to be very spontaneous and experimental.”
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While Ballenger currently specializes in painting landscapes, she also enjoys painting machinery, even completing a watercolor line of them.
“I like to paint what I see,” she said.
Ballenger also runs ultramarathons, and enjoys spending time outdoors where she gets much of her inspiration from.
“I spend my time there, and this place means something to me, it would be interesting to have a reminder of what that feels like,” she said, commenting that taking pictures don’t always capture the moment the same way paintings do.
Her latest award from KVIE isn’t her first. She’s also won Best of Show from the Duxbury Art Association in Massachusetts and an award of merit from the State Fair.
The KVIE award was particularly special, however, because Ballenger was a fan of the work of the juror, Miles Hermann.
“He’s got the kind of painting I could look at for hours,” she said, adding that she takes note of some of his techniques including layering and color. “To have been acknowledged by him, I feel, is pretty darn special.”
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