T here is a particular quiet that settles over a room when someone is reading. In this pastel portrait, Bill Suttles leans into that quiet: an older woman rests deep in a wicker chair, dress pooled around her in warm reds, golds, and flashes of blue, the open book balanced easily in her hands. The marks stay loose and searching, but the mood is steady and grounded, the kind of stillness that feels earned by a lifetime of turning pages.

Instead of polishing every edge, Bill lets the drawing show its own movement—the sweep of pastel across the paper, the ghost of earlier lines, the way the chair and figure seem to dissolve into atmosphere at the edges. It’s a study of attention as much as a likeness: a painter watching a reader, both of them absorbed in their own way, both fully present in the moment.

This artwork pre-dates my involvement in managing my dad's inevntory for him. If you are the current owner or collector of this piece, I would love to record it in the Suttles Arts Archive for provenance. If you’re willing, please message the title, medium/size, when/where it was acquired, and how you’d like to be listed (name, initials, or “Private Collection”). Thank you for helping preserve the history of Bill Suttles’ work.  -thanks, Todd