Meet the four artists with working studios on the second floor of our downtown New Bern gallery.
Susan Cheatham
Susan is a founding member of Art on the Neuse, a yearly art festival in Oriental, NC, and the Coastal Carolina Plein Air Painters, artists participating in once-a-week outdoor painting locations.
For a decade she studied with Susan Sarback, a Sacramento, California artist, who has her own school of Color and Light that teaches a technique called “full color seeing.” Susan uses this process to create paintings using color notes. Color notes can be like musical notes if you turn the notes into colors. The world never looks the same again after your eyes begin to be sensitized to full color seeing. You see the world like a child, fresh and new.
Susan’s passion is color and light connected with the creative life force energy within us all. She has a degree in Environmental Design from NCSU, and was a Landscape Designer in Raleigh for 20 years. She teaches therapeutic yoga and is a Reiki Master, practicing many types of healing using universal healing energy. The practice of yoga is limitless so she combines yoga, art, therapy, and energy work to help students empower themselves to teach them to heal all the layers of themselves.
Heide Ann Lock
Heide moved to New Bern from Connecticut where she was a member of the Society for Creative Arts of Newtown (SCAN). While a member of SCAN, she participated in member shows and was accepted into many juried shows. Heide has been working in acrylic and oil paints and enjoys both mediums. Her work has been shown in Connecticut venues and is in private collections across the country.
In looking for a place to retire, New Bern topped the list due to its charming downtown, friendly neighbors, and vibrant arts community. She is thrilled to be a part of the Community Artists Gallery & Studios (CAGS) and enjoys the camaraderie of painting with this fun group of artists.
Belinda Scheber
Belinda and her husband moved from the hectic metropolis of Washington, D.C., area to New Bern. The beauty of the coastal area of eastern North Carolina invigorated her love to express God’s beauty in painting. She does not have a formal education in art; however, she has taken lots of classes over the years.
Belinda studied surface design at the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, D.C., with Joseph McGurl, Mike Rooney, and Kathy George. She holds degrees in Geology and Geography from George Mason University and University of New Mexico, and retired as a civil servant and cartographer from the U.S. Army.
Belinda is a member of the Community Artists Gallery in New Bern, and online gallery Daily Paintworks. Her choice media is mostly watercolor and presently working on the technique of master “pouring watercolor.” Her favorite subjects to paint are elements in nature and still lifes.
Joyce Stratton
Joyce is basically self-taught, though she attended many workshops over the years. She’s been painting for about 25 years, moving from representational watercolor to abstract mixed media perfect fit. Her paintings are abstract mixed media on wood panel or cotton rag museum board. Joyce incorporates acrylic paint, gesso, ink, oil pastel, charcoal, graphite, and collage elements. For her the process is problem solving, adding and subtracting, and always showing a history of the process through layering.
The most important elements in her works are texture and expressive line. A painting begins with a word or phrase as the impetus and then becomes process driven. Complex and quiet, she hopes meditative and thought-provoking.
Joyce has been awarded four residencies to the Cill Rialaig project in the west of Ireland. She won numerous awards and has been published in The Best of Watercolor, the Palette Magazine, International Mixed Media Artist and Artist Magazine. Her work can be found on her website, and and City Gallery in Greenville, NC.