Emerging Artists | Stephanie Paige Thomson

An inspired life

Stephanie Paige Thomson, The Captain’s House, oil, 9 x 12.

Stephanie Paige Thomson, The Captain’s House, oil, 9 x 12.

This story was featured in the July 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art July 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

A SIGNATURE WORK by Stephanie Paige Thomson, at age 4 or 5, was an enormous face enthusiastically rendered on computer paper. Hyperbolic and emotive, her trademark faces usually expressed pure happiness or utter terror, and they often sat atop the “tiniest” bodies she could draw. “I was always copying other drawings, as well,” says the Indiana artist, now 22. Thomson remembers one year, during a road trip to the beach with her family, drawing a satisfying rendition of the collie on the cover of Lassie Come-Home. “I thought, ‘I will never draw anything better than this dog,’” she says, chuckling at the memory.

In fact, the painter has created a number of award-winning works in recent years that she never dreamed, as a young girl, she’d create one day. Thomson started studying fine art seriously just after graduating from high school. By then, she had already received hard-knock schooling in the art of another discipline: at age 16, she became a licensed falconer. “It took intense focus,” says Thomson, recalling the months she spent learning to handle, interact with, and train a wild red-tailed hawk for the hunting sport of falconry. “So I understand, on a very deep level, what it’s like to work hard, then fail, and finally see the work pay off,” she says. “Finally, the bird flies to you from across the field. It could fly away free, but it doesn’t.”

The labor-intensive practice of falconry, as it turns out, is just like painting, says Thomson, who can spend weeks and even months fine-tuning her oil paintings created from life and from her reference photographs. She has studied with acclaimed artists ranging from plein-air painter Kenn Backhaus to contemporary impressionist C.W. Mundy, and she also studies historic masters like Anders Zorn for inspiration. As for what a signature work by Thomson looks like today, one could refer to MAINE MAN, a light-filled portrait with breezy, oceanic vibes that the Portrait Society of America selected as a finalist in this year’s International Portrait Competition. For more examples, one could look to her portraits of other friends; to her landscapes; and to her portrayals of hawks she has trained. “You can’t create art out of a vacuum,” says Thomson. “I’m very interested in painting my life. I’m living a life that is so interesting to me, and I am so interested in life.” —Kim Agricola

representation
www.stephaniepaigethomson.com

This story was featured in the July 2020 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Get the Southwest Art July 2020 print issue or digital download now–then subscribe to Southwest Art and never miss another story.

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