Suanna Kuhn Breed was born in 1939 in Decatur, IL. She entered the University of Colorado, transferred to Stanford University, and completed her BA in Studio Art at the University of California-Berkeley in 1961. At UC-Berkeley she also earned a teaching credential in Elementary Education in 1971. In 1995 she received her Masters of Fine Arts degree at the University of Missouri where she was awarded the Dorothy L. Rollins Memorial Scholarship as outstanding graduate student in painting and drawing. Her MFA one-person show was held at the George Caleb Bingham Gallery in Columbia in December 1995.

She was in the four-person show “Mid-Missouri Women” at William Woods University-Fulton and presented a one-person show at the Moberly Area Community College in 1994. Her work was included in two “Women in the Arts” shows at the Brady Commons Gallery, University of Missouri, where in 1996 she received the first-place award in painting. Columbia College, Columbia, MO, exhibited a one-person retrospective show of her work in the Larson Gallery in September 2001. The Kirksville (MO) Arts Association exhibited a one-person show of her work in April 2002. She was a Truman State University faculty member in the Fine Arts Division from 1995 to 2005, mounting a one-person show in 1997 and a one-person show of new work in the University Art Gallery in September 2003. In August of 2004, two of her paintings were selected to hang in the Berkeley (CA) Art Center’s 21st Annual National Juried Exhibition. Her work was hung in the 2005 River Market exhibition in Kansas City, and in the MOAK 4-State Regional Exhibitions in 2006, 2008, and 2010 at the Springfield Art Museum, Springfield, MO. She was awarded the Friends of the Museum Purchase award at MOAK in 2006, and a $350 cash award in 2010. In March-April of 2009 her work was hung in a two-person show at ICON Gallery, Fairfield, IA. Also in August-October of that year she had a one-person show at Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, IA, followed by a one-person show at Teeple-Hansen Gallery in Fairfield. In 2017 with three other women artists she contributed to “Found in Translation” for Freeport Art Museum, which had a second showing at ICON in Fairfield in 2018.

Married to Chett Breed, she has raised their four children, and in addition to her university career she taught public and private elementary school full-time for ten years. She has been a teacher of the Transcendental Meditation Program since 1972. She is currently working on a new series of organic abstractions in ink drawing, monotypes, and acrylic painting.