Creativity sometimes plays well outside the box.  Susan Becker took a turn away from her animal portraiture to create “Unhinged,”  her 2016 mask donation to the Denver Hospice Mask Project.   She says: "I create intimate, intense animal portraiture that interprets a pet’s sense of dignity and their unique personality of joy, desire, or even sorrow, so that each furry individual can be celebrated and cherished, both in the moment, and for life. My imagery celebrates a special presence, an inner spark that connects to ours.  I hope my art brings joy to animal lovers and inspires others to learn about and protect our precious friends.  Portraying these personalities is a passion for me, a deep kind of intimacy.  My sense of time, age and gender seem to disappear when I am at my easel.  What emerges from my canvases are vibrant interpretations and translations in oil, designed to touch a person's heart.  These paintings are windows into the furriest souls as I see them, tangible, yet magical salutes to the animal-human emotional connection.  Through use of intense oil color, unusual texture (often with palette knife) and a slight sense of motion, an individual essence and sense of spirit is developed.  The eyes are created first so that right from the start, there is another being here to celebrate and play with me, quite a personal and sensual experience. It feels as if I come to know each individual intimately, bonding in the hours we spend together in creative process.  I fall in love with every animal I paint."

“Unhinged” portrays the pain of a person being silenced, ignored, interrupted, dismantled.  Our companion animals treated thus, also experience pain. “Unhinged” was born of my experience:  the inability to speak, of being silenced.  It portrays devastating early years of invisibility, heightened by clenched lips, and the inability to speak of it, which was as painful.  It was absolutely a character-shaper though.  In my need to be visible, I began achieving early on and am grateful and proud of my heart’s desires coming true.