Every artist needs a surface. A crisp page or cave wall, some sleepy block of marble or chunk of wood. Whatever form it takes, the surface becomes a place to land, to sort, scream, pray or question. To breathe and to be.

For Sue Scoggins, that surface was a blank canvas. That canvas took her in, all her bursting and burning, as she journeyed along side of her husband with young onset Alzheimer disease. Gradually, she transcended from coping to pure creating. Art gave her strength. It was passion and comfort, memory, confidence and want, alive on each awakening canvas.

With each brushstroke and bold, shimmering hues, her paintings show that good can come out of the bleakest situations. That, in fact, it is obliged to do so.

Her work now hangs or she has painted in North Carolina, California and Hawaii to places as far as Spain, Italy, Hungary and France. Her chosen surfaces — full of hope and a spirit forged from the hottest, harshest flames — now dot the world, the biggest, grandest surface of them all.