Susan Bourdet brings luminous watercolor artistry into daily planning through paintings that combine realistically detailed birds and animals with soft, impressionistic backgrounds that engage viewer imagination as much as visual accuracy. Working in watercolor for its spontaneous, fluid qualities, Bourdet has developed a technique where realistic subjects emerge from free-flowing backgrounds that imply rather than describe setting, creating images where color and intensity invite viewers to complete the scene in their own minds. Her work balances two great loves she spent years learning to combine: art and biology. This fusion manifests in 2027 calendars that satisfy both scientific observation and aesthetic beauty.

About Susan Bourdet

Susan Bourdet's path to becoming a celebrated wildlife artist wasn't straightforward. For many years she struggled to combine her two great loves: art and biology. When her children were small, she began doing ink illustrations for the Portland zoo newsletter, which led her to incorporate watercolor and full backgrounds into her work. Her paintings were discovered in a Portland gallery by Wild Wings, which has published her limited editions for twenty years. She's been featured in shows and exhibitions throughout the country, including the prestigious Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum's Birds in Art and the Society of Animal Artists' Art and the Animal. She's also authored two Northlight instructional books on watercolor, Painting the Allure of Nature and Capturing the Magic of Light, and appeared in two Creative Catalyst instructional videos. She lives and works in the Pacific Northwest, where she and her husband have created a backyard oasis for migratory songbirds complete with waterfall, pond, and lush woodland that provides daily inspiration for her work.

Susan Bourdet Songbird Calendars 2027

The Songbirds collection showcases Bourdet's ability to render birds with both scientific accuracy and artistic sensitivity, capturing not just physical characteristics but the personality and spirit of different species. The collection is available across multiple 2027 formats: wall calendar, vertical wall calendar for narrow spaces, a planner, a two-year planner for people who organize well in advance, and a monthly pocket planner for on-the-go scheduling. These calendars appeal to birders who appreciate accurate species depictions, backyard bird enthusiasts who feed and watch songbirds through the seasons, and anyone drawn to the cheerful presence that makes songbirds such beloved neighbors in gardens and wild spaces.

Susan Bourdet Hummingbird Calendars 2027

The Hummingbirds collection demonstrates Bourdet's particular skill at capturing subjects that are never still for long. Hummingbirds present unique challenges for wildlife artists: capturing them requires many hours in the field with camera and telephoto lens, and the resulting photos rarely catch the subject in focus or in a good setting, but they do catch the pose and light that become the basis for paintings. Bourdet then creates believable environments for her subjects, often placing hummingbirds among garden flowers or realistically rendered wild plants, finding weathered textures of rock, old wood, and bark to contrast with the softness of feathers and petals. For people who plant hummingbird gardens, hang feeders, and wait patiently for these tiny visitors, this calendar provides year-round celebration of creatures that seem more fairy tale than biology.

Cats in the Country: Rural Feline Life

The Cats in the Country collection explores feline subjects within rural and garden settings that reflect Bourdet's Pacific Northwest surroundings. These aren't studio cat portraits but paintings that place cats within the landscapes they inhabit, whether prowling through gardens, resting in weathered barns, or surveying territory from fence posts and stone walls. Her background in biology informs how she paints cats moving through actual environments rather than posed against generic backgrounds. The impressionistic settings she creates through her watercolor technique suit cats particularly well: anyone who's watched cats knows they exist in partly mysterious realms, appearing and disappearing, fully present one moment and utterly absorbed in invisible stimuli the next. Available in both wall and vertical formats.

Why People Choose Susan Bourdet Calendars

Bourdet has built a devoted following because her calendars successfully merge scientific observation with artistic interpretation, creating wildlife paintings that satisfy both the naturalist's desire for accuracy and the art lover's appreciation for technique, composition, and emotional resonance. Her distinctive watercolor technique, working with paper soaking wet to create impressionistic backgrounds, gives her work a recognizable style that stands apart from more conventional wildlife illustration. For people who maintain bird feeders, plant wildlife gardens, observe seasonal migrations, and find daily joy in watching nature just outside their windows, Susan Bourdet 2027 calendars provide planning tools that reflect those values and interests.