SUSAN CRAPO was born November 9, 1955 in Boston, MA, but grew up in Miami, Florida, a place that remained deeply important to her. She began to draw as a teenager, taking instruction in Miami first from Gigi Aramesco, and then from Roberto Martinez. She continued to study art at The Museum School in Boston, Swain School of Design in New Bedford, MA, and The Leo Marchutz School of Drawing and Painting in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Her son, Joe Connelly, was born in 1997, and Susan lived for many years in Greenfield, MA, raising Joe and working as a freelance transcriptionist, work she regarded proudly. One of the projects that meant the most to her was transcribing interviews with the Tuskegee Airmen, part of an oral history commissioned by the National Park Service.

Self-employed, Susan was able to take her work in the summers to a house on Lake Huron in Michigan that had been in her family for over a hundred years. Here she divided her time between the transcription work and her art. The changing moods of the lake and the nearby wide beet and hay fields inspired her for several decades. She also lived and worked for shorter spells in Santa Barbara, CA, and in New Mexico.

Throughout her life, Susan worked seriously and enthusiastically in charcoal, graphite, oil pastel, watercolor, gouache, and oils. She often said that she returned to drawing when things got hard. Susan was drawing right up until her final days, sketching the flowers on her bedside table and the friends who came to see her. She died November 5, 2008 of breast cancer, five days before her 53rd birthday.