Celeste Susany recreates a rivalry from her early years
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. » When local artist Celeste Susany was commissioned by the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame to create this year’s program guide cover art she was happy to relive a moment not only early in her life, but also very early into her artistic career.
“This is the 40th anniversary of the Alydar and Affirmed rivalry which a lot of people weren’t around for, but I was,” Celeste Susany said. “It was real easy for me because it was a very exciting time for me.
“When he asked me to do it, of course because I was very familiar with the subject and combined with the excitement I have for the art it was very easy for me to come up with that cover.”
The rivalry between the two horses coincided with her experience in art school.
“My parents had taken me to the track during art school (Art Center College of Design, in Los Angeles) and I fell in love with it, but never made a living at it,” Susany said. “I was drawing horses then and painting horses because of that experience of going to Santa Anita.”
Her love of horses also moved her from one job to another. Visit
“After I got out of art school I started illustrating for a newspaper for a little bit, found that really boring and redundant,” Susany said. “After that I said ‘Why not start painting them and bringing them to little shows and that’s how I started.”
Through the years her art has taken around the world in an effort to help her hone her craft.
“I’ve had a house here since 2001 and started an art gallery here,” Susany said. “I lived in Saint Lucia in the Caribbean for about eight years and now I have a little tiny place in the woods in Kentucky, off the grid. I have a studio there and there is nothing else but owls and coyotes.”
She wanted a place to unplug mentally to find her craft again.
“It was because I was feeling a little bored with my work, not bored, but I was starting to know the outcome of stuff before I began it, of a painting and it wasn’t fulfilling me as an artist,” Susany said. “I wasn’t getting that feeling like a jazz musician; it feels like they are reaching into your soul and to god. I wasn’t getting that. This year in the woods I got that.”
After more than four decades as a practicing artist, Susany has seen her style change.
“At the very beginning when I first started, I thought everything had to be so real that I wanted you to feel that you were in that place and time,” Susany said. “I was such a realist that people said ‘I can’t tell that from a photograph, but over time I realized it wasn’t that, it was this ecstatic feel that you get at the races, that you see these colors, that they become part of your soul.
“That’s where my changes started taking place little by little. It’s gotten more so as the years went on.”
Those colors are apparent on this year’s National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame program cover, what she wanted to deliver.
“My progression from a realist into an impressionist into where now I have a whole different feel about, a whole different reason for painting,” Susany said. “It’s because I read a book that was describing how we’re all molecules, we’re all sparkling and we can be sparkling colors.
“I said that’s what I feel about painting and about finding our way back to our source whatever you consider that to be and that’s how I feel about painting right now. Everything is different, it feels magical again. I feel like I fell in love again.”