October 22 — My Father, Bill Suttles, at Ninety-Five
By: SuttlesArt
T oday, my father turns ninety-five.
October 22, 1930 — a date that’s easy to remember, harder to grasp when I look across the decades of work stacked around the studio. Paintings, drawings, ideas still forming — all of them reminders that creativity doesn’t retire.
He’s still at the easel, still making quiet discoveries. The line is steady, the color deliberate, the humor intact. When I asked him recently what keeps him painting, he smiled and said, “There’s always another way to see it.”
Ninety-five years is a long time to be in conversation with the world, but that’s what painting is — an ongoing dialogue. Some of his early works from the 1950s still hang near the new ones, and the conversation continues between them.
What I see most now is gratitude — not for what’s finished, but for what’s still possible. There’s something profoundly hopeful about that: to still be learning from your own hand, your own color, your own questions. Today isn’t about milestones or retrospectives. It’s about presence — being here, paint still drying, ideas still forming, the work still alive.
This reflection is part of the Suttles Continuum, our family’s living archive and storytelling project. Through it, we celebrate not only the art of Bill Suttles, but the continuing creative dialogue that connects generations. Every new piece, every reflection like this one, adds to that living record.
Studio Notes
The real gift of today is realizing that creative life isn’t a chapter — it’s a continuum. Ninety-five years of seeing, feeling, and translating the world through paint is more than an achievement; it’s a way of being.
I’m grateful to still be part of that story — watching him work, listening for the silence that turns into a line, the gesture that becomes a life.
View the Bill Suttles Legacy Collection →
Preserving and celebrating the creative continuum of Bill, Pat, and Todd Suttles — a living archive connecting generations through art, story, and digital preservation.
Suttles Arts Estate & Legacy Downsizing Project | Visit www.BillSuttles.com to explore more.
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