Creative Journey

Susan Raybould is an English-born artist currently residing in Los Angeles. Her love of art stemmed from her parents and siblings, who were all artists. She grew up in a creative family. 

She began her professional art career in the early 1980s after moving to New York, where she immersed herself in the art scene.

After moving to San Francisco in the late eighties to concentrate on wildlife art under the tutelage of John Seerey-Lester, Britain’s pre-eminent wildlife painter, Raybould undertook her first professional project in Hawai’i in 1990. As a member of the Lanai Art Program led by John Wullbrandt, Raybould co-created murals and individual canvas paintings for the Manele Bay Hotel. 

Subsequently, working in Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and other far-flung locales, Raybould realized a series of ceramic sculptures depicting animals native to those lands. Adding three dimensions to her repertoire made her an inheritor of the animalier tradition. On a visit to Japan in 2014, Raybould was immersed in origami art traditions, which profoundly influenced her.  Raybould was exposed to the possibilities of origami sculpture. She gradually broke away from realism and began experimenting with origami forms and techniques in a non-objective manner.

Raybould’s origami inventions led her to become involved with stop-motion animation when she moved to Los Angeles in 2010. She began designing, producing, and directing origami-based animation for musicians. However, the labor-intensive and often tedious nature of stop-motion animation led Raybould to seek a more immediate effect with origami paper sculpture. She is currently experimenting with color, composition, and, particularly, the sensation of motion.