Susan lived in New Mexico for about a year in 1999. She was intrigued—and often challenged—by the dry, austere, vertical landscape after working by Lake Huron and in the wide, fertile fields of rural Michigan. She enjoyed drawing and painting Cerro Pedernal, a narrow mesa that Georgia O’Keefe made famous in her work. From O’Keefe’s angle, the mesa was flat-topped, from Susan’s, it took on a conical form. Susan enjoyed this distinction.