Santa Barbara artist Susan LeVine was born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee where her love of nature was first ignited. This journey began with a year of study in Italy where she was immersed in the beauty of artistic expression and the romance of the Italian culture. She returned to the United States and completed her masters in Art History at the University of Chicago. She was a research assistant at the Art Institute of Chicago, worked for an Auction house and taught art and art appreciation to children, her greatest use of her masters was to awaken her own sensibility as an artist.