Susan Mein — Home for the Holidays
by Sally Hansen
It’s a perfect time of year to replenish our souls with peace and contentment. Susan Mein’s loving paintings of Victorian winter scenes effortlessly transport her viewers back to remembrances of a kinder, gentler time and place. Painting them does the same for Susan.
She blames it on her youth. Susan was born in Toronto as “middle kid” of two first-generation immigrants, but her parents moved the family to Tottenham (about 40 miles northwest of Toronto) when Susan was only four years old. “When I was growing up, life was wonderful. Growing up in my small town you had the warmest, cosiest feeling. There were only about 600 people, and I felt so safe and free.” Susan’s dad ran an auto repair shop, and her mom sold footwear and outerwear to the farming community in a quaint little shop in a quaint little town. As Susan puts it, “If anything happened at school, my mom and the neighbours knew about it before I got home.”