Susanna Blunt

SUSANNA BLUNT is a Canadian portrait artist, painter and sculptor. Born in 1941 in Harbin, China, she grew up in British Columbia. As a teenager she studied painting at the Banff School of Fine Arts and later continued her art training in London, studying drawing and basic sculpture at the Hammersmith School of Art and Architecture, completing a three-year course at the Byam Shaw School, and then receiving a scholarship for four further years of postgraduate study at the Royal Academy, where she won several prizes and a silver medal. She held her first solo exhibition in Calgary in 1966 and returned to Canada in 1970, settling in Vancouver. Blunt taught art in California and at the University of British Columbia while developing a practice in portraiture, murals, design and sculpture. In 1988 she designed an optical-illusion room for Science World in Vancouver. In 1995 she painted the official portrait of Gerda Hnatyshyn for Rideau Hall, and in 1997 her portrait of Prince Edward was delivered to Buckingham Palace. In 2002 Blunt entered the Royal Canadian Mint competition for a new effigy of Queen Elizabeth II; her uncrowned portrait was selected and was used on Canadian coinage from 2003. From 2014 to 2017 she returned to formal sculpture study at the Art Institute at Capilano University. In 2017 she received the North Shore Arts Alliance Fans Award.