Click here to add text.
Copyright © 2011. Stephanie Shank. All Rights Reserved.
Welcome to my online gallery of art. For those art lovers who prefer to directly view my paintings, you will find my works on display at
the William and Joseph Gallery , a Santa Fe art gallery, and at the Costello-Childs Contemporary Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ .
My paintings are very accessible on a purely aesthetic level, but they touch on deeper issues if you allow yourself some
time to absorb the imagery. My vision ranges from the literal to the conceptual, from abstract landscape paintings to figurative
expressionism. I typically don't represent any of the elements of nature faithfully. The images are meant to touch the subconscious mind of
the viewer, evoking a primal feeling and capturing a universal visual language. By painting with a spontaneous, gestural expression, my
work informs a dynamic impression of raw emotion and the power of now.
Clearly, we are not born psychologically integrated, but become so through effort and growth. Our shadow side and our light side must learn to
coexist. A certain consciousness of the split is part of being human. For me, this consciousness and process has been the life force of my
expressionist aesthetic. My intent is to sustain an authentic vision and identity; my desire is to continue to create paintings that emotionally
charge one out of normal habits of seeing. Color will always evoke a realm of feeling and memory for me. Through the language of color, non-
referential mark-making, and gestural paint handling, my work is a culmination of an emotional experience relating to a balance between
lightness and darkness, agitation and bliss. There is always some evidence of what came before, always uncertainty and inevitable change. In
essence, the paintings are constructed as organically and irrationally as life itself.
"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image.
For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can
read in it, well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that there is
something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw
these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to
produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head
and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute."
Abstract Landscape Paintings and
Expressionist Art
THE WILLIAM AND JOSEPH GALLERY
727 Canyon Road Santa Fe, NM
Solo Exhibition June 1 through June 30
Opening Reception Friday, June 22 5pm to 8 pm
