By Clinton Martin
When you’ve gone to the same school for years, or work in the same office for decades, or maybe even dine out at the same restaurant year after year, you end up walking past décor on the wall, statues out front, or looking at features so often that you kind of forget they are even there. Then something causes you to stop and look afresh.
I must have walked past “Morning Glory” by Susie Riehl a million times in the Amish Country News offices. I guess I’ve been here for “decades” since I’m coming up on 20 years here. “Morning Glory” is dated 1997, so it was clearly there, for a while, when I first walked in.
Being a lovely painting, nicely framed, I’d appreciated the way it warmed the office, without really ever truly looking at it closely. Recently I decided to actually inspect it. So besides being credited to the artist Susie Riehl, and dated 1997, it was noted as being purchased at a long-defunct art gallery in the village of Intercourse.
So, I decided to learn what I could about the artist. Not everyone named Susie Riehl is Amish, but it is definitely an Amish sounding name. Susie Riehl was indeed Amish. She lived in White Horse (village.) Her upbringing was a typical Amish thread. Simplicity and practicality were taught in her home growing up (not exactly encouraging artistic expression.)
As an adult, though she had no formal artistic training, she felt the pull to paint. It brought her meaning and fulfillment in her daily life. Giving it some thought she decided her talent was a gift from God, was a “good” thing and not “bad” and therefore honoring God to develop it. Her husband also encouraged her to paint, which she started doing in earnest around 1987.
Her studio was her farm’s kitchen – nothing fancy. Her paintings were of everyday things to an Amish person. Quilts, barns, farm scenes, country life. She became rather well known in the area, with many out-of-town visitors appreciating and purchasing her art.
Legend has it, though I can’t personally vouch for the legend’s accuracy, that she earned enough to pay off her farm’s mortgage, which otherwise would have gone into foreclosure. Regardless, the farm is still in the family, though Susie Riehl passed away in 2023 at the age of 75.