Susan Brinkmann was born in Southampton (United Kingdom) in 1963. When she was seven years old, her family moved to the Netherlands, where she still lives and works now.

She studied drawing, painting, photography and art history at the Academy of Arts in Tilburg, and graduated with a teaching degree. Among her teachers were the now world-famous artists Marlene Dumas, René Daniels and Paul de Nooijer.

After graduating, Susan soon specialized in realistic portrait drawing and currently receives international appreciation and commissions.

Her work has been exhibited in both solo- and group exhibitions in many places in the Netherlands, and among others in the United Kingdom (Menier Gallery, London 2016), Belgium (Global Art, Tongeren 2014), and the iconic Greek island Santorini during its first Art Biennale in 2012. She was also invited to take part in the Langkawi Art Biennale in Malaysia which unfortunately didn’t take place because of the Covid pandemic in 2020.

Susan Brinkmann’s artwork has been published in many books and art magazines, often as featured artist. Caran D’Ache Jubilee book, Circle Quarterly Art Review magazine, Color Magazine, CP Magic, Colored Pencil Magazine, several editions of CP Treasures and many more. It was also shown on internationally respected websites like The Bridge International Contemporary Artists in Malaysia (also in an e-book), HMVC Gallery New York, Camelback Gallery, Artroom Gallery, Grey Cube Gallery, Fusion Art and with the Bindaas Art Group in India, which invited her to be a jury member in an international art contest in 2018.

In 2023, her artwork was also shown on HMVC Gallery’s billboard at Time Square, New York.

What she creates is highly realistic. Artists quality coloured pencils are her main medium. When making portraits, she always uses pencils or graphite, because they allow a high degree of detail to achieve maximum realism. Her technique is often compared with the work of ‘old masters’.

Artwork made with coloured pencils is relatively new to the world of art. But worldwide appreciation of the quality of this medium is growing fast. Most people have no idea what is possible to create with coloured pencils and are astonished to see the degree of realism that can be achieved.