Stacy Wieringa
Multidisciplinary Artist based in Bronx, New York
ABOUT
Stacy Wieringa is a Bronx-area-based mixed media painter and a drawer with thread. As an art educator, she works and has worked with a wide variety of art-making materials and processes throughout the course of each of the past 20 years. Recently, she has been exploring the labels people place on themselves and the labels people place upon others through perception and stereotypes, and as a mother of three boys, she is especially interested in gender messages young children receive from outside the home. She delights in the imperfection and uniqueness of “the hand” in her artworks and has been challenging herself to see and show figures using only shapes of different values of one or similar colors. She is also working on creating a lexicon of positive/negative space patterns that focus on overlapping and underlapping shapes in her backgrounds, but also that contain symbolism based on personal experiences. Her portraits are primarily created using acrylic or watercolor with hand-stitching on top.
ARTIST STATEMENT
I have been exploring portraiture, specifically faces, for many years in my artworks, and many of my favorite artists such as Mickalene Thomas, Kerry James Marshall, Bisa Butler, Sarah Detweiler, Frida Kahlo, Kehinde Wiley, Kara Walker, Amy Sherald, and Marc Chagall also show people in their artworks. I love to simplify the highlights and shadows I see into basic organic shapes. Over the years, I have done this using Adobe Illustrator, acrylic paint, silkscreen, pencil, and pen. The works I have chosen to show here are those in which I have looked at the ways that light hits the forms on faces and I have simplified those shapes and colors to show the essence of what someone looks like. I also incorporate large patterns in my work that show a contrast between positive and negative space in the background. I use limited color schemes and I see working in those confines as a challenge, which I enjoy immensely. I have also begun stitching onto my canvases. I have no formal training in embroidery, but I think of it more like drawing or doodling with thread to add another layer of meaning and visual interest.
Website: artistwriterstudio.com / Instagram: @artistwriterstudio
