A Conversation with September Featured Artist Anne Smith Stephan

It’s been an interesting past five months. How has your work been affected by coronavirus?

The biggest change is not having my friend and fellow artist, Nancy Delman, to paint with me. Before Covid we painted together once a week and, although we have very different styles of painting, (she’s mostly figurative and I’m abstract) the basics of any artwork are always the same: color, value, space, form, shape and line. Needless to say, it’s been very solitary for months, and I miss her creative company and critique.

How is work in this exhibit similar and/or different from your previous work?

This work is abstract and is the way I’ve been painting for years. In some ways it’s more difficult than painting from life since you’re painting from you mind’s eye rather the your
eye on reality. Every now and then I do miss painting figuratively and may go back and see what that’s like. My paintings have morphed over the years from figurative to fruit-like shapes to abstraction and I’m still drawn to all of those subjects.

How long have you been painting abstracts - how did it develop?

I’ve been painting most of my life and as a student began in academic studies. It
quickly became abstract until, after leaving it for a few years, I was returning to it
and felt like I needed to start again with figure painting. Classes became necessary in order to have live models so the Evanston Art Center became an important part of my art life.
(In fact, I ended up teaching there for a few years.) After an exhibit of my paintings in an office building some tenants objected to the nudes in the show. That moved me in a new direction.
I began turning body parts into many types of fruit which was great fun. Then I started abstracting the strange fruit completely and the rest is history.

You tend to become very immersed in one color for an extended period of time. Lately it’s a very dark blue. Talk about why that appeals to you, as opposed to many colors.

Early on I painted in the wonderful warm and senuous earth tones using loads of burnt
sienna, yellow ochre, and red-oranges. As life went on and got a bit dark I began using
black because I had always been told “you can’t use black paint, you must make your
own”. Coming out of the black phase I began adding blue and got immersed in the deep dark richness of the color and how it became balanced with tinted whites.