Profits & Passions : Susanne Halsteen Koval The banker is an artist

Profits & Passions : Susanne Halsteen Koval
The banker is an artist
BY KATHY KAHN

Susanne Halsteen Koval spends her days involved in the marketing and advertising for Riverside Bank, where she’s worked since 2000. “I went into banking right out of high school,” says Koval. “My generation picked an industry to work in and just stuck with it. I started out as a teller and never thought of doing anything else.” She took a few years off when her children were born, but for the most part, she’s been in banking for 25 years.

While at Riverside, she reconnected with David McFarland, president of the bank, whom she had briefly worked with at another bank, and he invited her to come work at its Poughkeepsie headquarters.

“I probably went to more schools than anyone else I know.” But when Koval lost her mother at the age of 12, her father couldn’t keep up

his hectic pace and care for his growing children, so she

finished her academic studies in boarding school, where her love of painting began to take its lifelong roots.

Portraits of her three, now-grown children adorn her walls and while she’s often commissioned to create family portraits for others, it can be a somewhat disconcerting. “It’s a lot easier painting your own family,” says Koval, “because you know them, you can capture their personality. With others, it’s a bit trickier. I’m always a bit nervous…then my client will see my finished work and tell me how thrilled they are with their portrait. As an artist, you are always your own worst critic.”

Koval’s special niche is house portraits. “People love their homes and there’s something special about having a painting of the place you love as a keepsake.” A portrait of a home adorning her own dining room wall has special meaning to her and provides inspiration when she’s bringing other people’s homes to life on canvas.

The painting shows a quiet street on the tiny island of Bornholm off the coast of Denmark. It’s accompanied by another smaller painting of a red clapboard house that seems almost surreal in its surroundings. Koval wasn’t born there. It’s the birthplace of her grandparents and her mother, but for Koval it represents home. “I have only been back a few times,” she says a bit sadly. “I did take my children to visit the place where their grandmother was born…and my brother still lives in the house, at least during the warm months. It wasn’t built to live in year-round…but we have managed to hold on to our family’s birthplace.”

Having built a steady clientele through word of mouth, Koval’s work can be viewed on her Web site (www.watersue.com). Does she ever think about leaving the world of finance and going out on her own?

“Sure.” says the banker/painter. “I’d love to have my own studio and paint all day. I’m sure it’s a dream every artist has and though I doubt it will ever happen--after all, we all know the tale of the ‘starving artist.’ I think I’ll stick with banking. But, it’s certainly wonderful to think about.”

One dream Koval intends to follow is a trip back to the tiny island of Bornholm, to visit her family’s birthplace and reconnect with her Danish roots. For Susanne Halsteen-Koval, there really is “no place like home…and Bornholm will always be ‘home’ for me.”

Reader Comments

Please send us your comments!

Add Your Comments

TalkBack & let us know what YOU think.

If you have something to add to this discussion topic, we'd like to know.

To send a comment:

1. Enter your full name
2. Enter your email address
3. Post your comment and click 'Submit'

Full Name:

Email Address:

Example: johndoe@aol.com

Comments:
Post your comment here
(WestfairInc reserves the right to edit any text for broadcast)