Meet our campaign artist: Rebecca Stenn

Each edition, we select an artwork to feature in our campaign. This Fall, Affordable Art Fair NYC is thrilled to have selected the vibrant, bold, and rhythmic artwork titled ‘Tapestry #3’ by artist Rebecca Stenn. We were lucky to have the chance to chat with Rebecca about her artistic journey and where she finds inspiration for her unique style.

Rebecca is a multi-talented New York-based artist who is constantly experimenting with modes of making. Her latest series of abstracts, Tapestry, is inspired by the artist’s captivation with the sea.

You can see this work and others by Rebecca in Agora Gallery’s booth from September 25-29 at Affordable Art Fair NYC Fall 2024.

Take us back to the beginning. How did your life as an artist take shape?

I grew up in a small town near Toronto, Ontario. From a very young age, dance captivated me and I decided, at age five, that I would be a ballerina. I was also always interested in visual art, as my mother was a painter, but the professional study of dance took me on a path to intensive training at an early age, eventually leading me to Juilliard and subsequently to performing and touring with dance companies throughout the world. It was during the pandemic, when any kind of live performance came to an abrupt halt, that I began to find my way to the canvas, as a means to express the movement still inside of me as a dancer. Over time (although quite suddenly as well), painting became the core of my focus and is now my primary interest and artistic practice.

Can you tell us more about your artistic practice?

My artistic practice includes abstracts, landscapes, and portraits. When I paint an abstract, if I listen well, the canvas tells me what to do. If I paint a portrait, I often paint someone I love or am drawn to. I am interested in capturing a layered or questioning expression. I paint what I see. Choosing my subject matter is both a reasoned and instinctive process, and that is what makes it so captivating and compelling for me. I have been interested in creating work that speaks to the current political moment and my series of newspaper portraits, using headlines from the New York Times, allows the stories of the subjects to be told. For more abstract pieces, the process starts with the spark of an idea. It could be a color, a moment, an expression, or something I see on my way home. I let the idea sit for a while until I’m ready to stand in front of the canvas.

I love the moment of the first brush stroke on the canvas–the boldness, the audacity of it. After that, the painting often reveals itself to me. Sometimes I work on a painting for days, coming back again and again to the canvas with many overpainted layers.

Currently, I’m working on a series of abstract landscape pieces, inspired by the Columbia Gorge in Northern Oregon, where I spend most summers. I’m interested in the linearity of the landscape and look to distill the river, mountains, and fields into clearly delineated lines and shapes on the canvas, stripping down the landscape to its essential nature and allowing the viewer to fill the rest in. I’m also currently involved in a collaboration with a graffiti artist. We are creating a series of acrylic, spray paint, and Krink marker paintings on canvas.

You’ve always been a dancer. At what point did painting become a form of your artistic expression?

I have been a professional dancer and choreographer for the last 30 years. I performed all over the world with dance companies Pilobolus and Momix and had my own dance company before I started painting six years ago. The experience that has most influenced my work is my lifelong fascination with movement, form, and image. I now paint the way I have danced and choreographed, looking at questions of space, line, texture, color, and composition, all inspired by movement. My approach has changed and morphed in that time as I discover what I want to say as a painter and continue to experiment boldly and sometimes wildly with my brush. I have a sense of timelessness now when I paint. I can take as long as I want or need to, I have discovered the un-rushed process of letting a painting unfold over time.

What do you hope people take away from your work?

I am interested in the viewer being able to have an experience when they encounter my work. I can make work from very specific intentions, but ultimately, I have no control over the viewer’s response. It is exciting to see the varied and disparate reactions people have as they view my work. I would like the work to evoke a feeling, much the way I experience sharing dance in a performative space–responses are often ineffable, deeply felt experiences that reside in the world of an emotional and intuitive connection.

“I am interested in the viewer being able to have an experience when they encounter my work.”

Do you have a favorite artwork or project you’ve worked on?

Recently, I collaborated with the video artist Camilla Tassi. She was creating projected images for a backdrop for the Miami City Ballet’s production of Jamar Robert’s choreographic work, “Sea Change,” which premiered at the Adrienne Arscht Center in Miami, in October 2023. Camilla asked if she could use images of five of my paintings for the projected backdrop, and together we chose the abstract works that had water imagery inherent in them. It was incredibly satisfying to see the finished work–huge projected images of my paintings on stage–while the performers danced in front of them, almost immersed inside of them. It was a moment where both of my worlds came together in a profound and deeply fulfilling way.

What are the most rewarding aspects of being an artist today?

Making art, for me, is practicing mindfulness. Standing in front of a canvas, I am completely in the moment and hours can pass where I am in that deeply contemplative flow state. Of course, it’s not always easy and there are moments of intense frustration as well, but the ability to tune out the noise and acutely concentrate is gratifying.

What advice do you have for emerging artists today?

Do what you want to do. Make what you want to make. Listen well, observe, check in, and make the time you need to honor your craft. Follow your intuition. Tune out the noise.

Where can we see your latest work?

My next show will be at Agora Gallery in early September 2024. I will be showing eight large abstract landscape paintings, inspired by the Columbia Gorge in Northern Oregon. I will also be showing works from my Tapestry series in that show.