Stephanie Campos | A Challenge Rewarded

Stephanie Campos aims for realism as she honors Native Americans through her charcoal portraits

By Gussie Fauntleroy

Stephanie Campos remembers approaching an art instructor she respected to show him one of the charcoal portraits she had drawn of a Native American subject. She was nearing 40 and had been teaching herself to draw and paint realistic portraits since age 13, progressively honing her skills. She had recently enrolled in a community college program for art and illustration, thinking a degree might lead to an art-related job after an uninspiring stint in secretarial work. As it turned out, the program focused on the emerging field of digital illustration—not at all what interested someone who had been in love with paint, pastel, and charcoal since childhood.

Campos had never shared any of her portraits with anyone outside her family and was curious about what he would think. What he told her changed her life. He studied the drawing and then turned to his student and said, “That is what I have always wanted to be able to do and sell through a gallery.” Campos was floored. “It was an eye-opener to hear an art instructor proclaim that he aspired to do what I had taught myself,” she says.

Confidence boosted, Campos had two portraits framed and set off to find a gallery in her hometown of Tucson, where she still lives. The first gallery had no interest in an unknown artist and wouldn’t even look at her work. At the second one she was told that they would display both pieces in the front window and see what happened. Within a week both had sold. Since then, Campos’ art has been exhibited in galleries and museums around the country and has earned top awards at a national juried show. It has brought her joy to find herself finally following the heartfelt advice of her father, who played piano for a living until he was 90. “He would remind me through the years that I would love my job if I did what I loved,” she says.

Campos has loved drawing since the first time she held a crayon. In kindergarten, after each student drew a picture, Campos’ teacher sat down beside her and asked her to draw it again. “I don’t remember what the subject was, but maybe my teacher thought it was accidentally good,” she says. After she drew it just as well the second time, the teacher told her she was an artist and phoned Campos’ mother to tell her as well. Little Stephanie didn’t know what an artist was, but she was thrilled with the art supplies her parents bought her because of her teacher’s words.

A quiet, observant child, Campos also enjoyed spending time in nature, examining details of the plants and small creatures of the Sonoran Desert landscape surrounding the family home. And she loved immersing herself in magazines from which she could study—and try to copy—the faces and clothing of people from different cultures. At 13 she came across the artwork of Cowboy Artists of America member R. Brownell McGrew in a copy of Arizona Highways. “I was smitten,” she says. “I greatly admired his paintings of Navajo and Hopi people and set to work trying my hand at painting some of his subjects.”

Having previously drawn with pastels, Campos had taken up oil paints when her father gave her a set; her earliest portraits were in oil. She experimented with charcoal when she was in her teens, but it often ended up all over her hands, face, and clothes. She shifted to acrylics before returning two decades later to charcoal, which continues to be her medium of choice.

When Campos’ mother observed her daughter’s interest in painting Native American subjects, she realized the time had come to share some somber information about American history and Campos’ own ancestral past. At age 13, the artist learned that her forebears were Cherokee and had barely escaped being part of the tragedy of the Trail of Tears. Between 1830 and 1850, the U.S. government forced some 60,000 Native Americans to walk hundreds of miles from their homes in southern states to live in an area of Oklahoma designated as Indian Territory. Aimed at opening land and resources for white settlers, the relocation resulted in immeasurable suffering and countless deaths among people of the tribes involved, including Cherokee.

Campos learned that her Cherokee ancestors, successful farmers in Georgia, were fortunate enough to catch wind of the situation in time to flee. Her half-Cherokee grandmother’s family headed west. Her grandmother was born in Oklahoma and traveled by covered wagon to Arizona as a teen, where the artist’s mother was born. “It was shocking to hear,” Campos says of her ancestors’ story, but it reinforced her passion for painting Native American subjects. “I wanted to honor a people who tried to live freely, and I still do,” she says.

Today the artist spends endless hours searching through historical photographs for the faces that call to her to be portrayed. Early on she searched through books before discovering online resources for the Smithsonian Institution and Library of Congress. State museums in North Dakota and elsewhere also offer extensive online photographic archives. “I’m so thankful for the photographers of late 1800s who carried their heavy equipment across the Plains,” she says. Even though many of the photographs were staged and posed, Campos appreciates that the subjects sat for the photographers. Often the images were shot up close, offering the artist rich detail from which to work. “There’s a lot you can read from people’s eyes and mouths, especially in older faces,” she says.

Such is the case with two of her award-winning portraits. Her remarkable charcoal portrait of Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph hints at the pain she saw in his eyes. “His expression is stamped with hardship and loss,” she notes. “He tried so hard to lead his tribe to freedom, and his words are heartbreaking,” she says. In 2019, CHIEF JOSEPH earned a People’s Choice Award as well as first place in the 2-Dimensional on Archival Paper category at the Cowgirl Up! exhibition at the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg, AZ.

FAST THUNDER was awarded first place in the same category at the 2022 Cowgirl Up! exhibition. Of the Oglala Sioux man named Fast Thunder, Campos says, “I liked his determined expression, and I imagine he was an intelligent and fair man.” Through her research she learned that he took part in war parties, was considered brave, and later in life served as a tribal judge. Campos researches each of her subjects for biographic and historical information. When she finds what she believes is accurate information, she prints and attaches it to the back of the artwork.

Campos works in her studio at the back of her house in a quiet neighborhood close to where she grew up. Sliding glass doors offer good natural light and a view of fruit trees and flowers—gardenia, bougainvillea, camellia, hibiscus, and queen’s wreath among them. On archival Stonehenge paper set on a table easel, she begins each work with light lines. She then meticulously adds shading, gradually building values, dimension, and form. Her tools include a charcoal pencil, blending stick, dense chalk, and a kneaded eraser for highlights. She focuses on small sections of the image at a time, striving to honor the subject through her accuracy. While most of her portraits have minimal backgrounds, lately she occasionally has been including horses and clouds.

Although her portraits emerge slowly—each one can take up to a month—Campos finds satisfaction in the work. “It’s fulfilling to see my markings gradually morph into the individual I set out to draw,” she says. As a child she often wondered why her sisters didn’t share her passion, thinking that if she could draw, everyone could. “Since then, I’ve come to believe that everyone is gifted with a particular interest to hone, refine, and share with others,” Campos says. “Drawing is what I love to do.”

representation
Settlers West Galleries, Tucson, AZ; www.stephaniecampos.com.

This story appeared in the December 2022/January 2023 issue of Southwest Art magazine.