12 People You Need to Know in 2012: Susan Sommer-Luarca

Susan Sommer-Luarca turned down a shot to work in animation at Disney, but she’s found plenty of ways to share her talents with the world.

The commissioned artist and owner of Springfield-based Susan Sommer-Luarca Fine Art was named the official artist for two Triple Crown horse races and Olympic games in Beijing and Vancouver, British Columbia. In 2010, she painted New York City’s Rockefeller Center Christmas tree live, and in 2011, she was asked by NASA to paint live the last space shuttle launch of Discovery.

Sommer-Luarca, who grew up on a horse farm in the Christian County town of Billings, says her father, Gerald, was the harshest critic – and biggest supporter – of her artistic talent growing up.

“When I was a kid, I was drawing these horses constantly,” she says. “Being a professional in that business, he was very critical of everything I did, constantly correcting me and telling me how to make it better.”

When she was 12, he brought home horse muscle and bone charts, and hung them in Sommer-Luarca’s room.

“When I look back at that, I can’t think of how I could have had a better art education,” says Sommer-Luarca, who in 2008 painted the “Wild Horses” mural on Springfield’s Campbell 16 Ciné.

After graduating in 1989 from Missouri State University, Sommer-Luarca moved to Orlando, Fla., to work as an intern at Disney World, Disney Studios and MGM Studios.

Disney offered her a job in animation, and though she didn’t take it, she couldn’t stay away from art. She spent two years traveling to the Hamptons in Long Island, N.Y., and to New Mexico and Jackson, Wyo., to show her drawings and paintings.

While in Jackson, the owners of Buffalo Trails galleries asked her to paint live in a storefront window to draw in customers.

She remembers the phone call she then made to her parents. “I told them, ‘I’m going to focus on my art from now on,’” she says.

Sommer-Luarca moved to Springfield in 1993 and opened a downtown gallery. After executives with Springfield-based Bass Pro Shops commissioned her to paint a mural in the company’s original museum, they asked her to paint murals in new Bass Pro stores nationwide. That work inspired her to set up a foundation, Susan Sommer-Luarca for Habitat, which has a mission to preserve wildlife and habitat through art and education.

Now, the artist is writing and illustrating a series of three children’s books, which she expects to be published in 2012.

“A lot of what I want to do is inspire people,” she says.[[In-content Ad]]