Stephanie Serpick Paintings

Stephanie Serpick is a visual artist working primarily as a painter. She received her MFA from the University of Chicago, and her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University. Her work has been shown in various exhibitions in the U.S. and internationally. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, she currently lives and works in New York. The work concerns the themes of isolation and grief, and this was magnified during the pandemic. Our forced isolation and the challenges it brought to our physical and mental health provides a shared experience from which to consider grief and eventual healing. In the most recent work, images of windows, including blowing or transparent curtains, lend a feeling of being cut off from the outside world. And like the bedding in A New Fall and It’s Always Darkest Before Dawn, these paintings are devoid of a human presence, and therefore feel lonely and isolating, reflecting what many have experienced during the pandemic. The paintings of bedding are represented by unmade beds and tossed sheets on intentionally blank, somewhat rough backgrounds. Both the empty bed and the windows represent a place for grief, solitude and healing. As such, the work speaks to our shared feeling of trauma, with the understanding that while we all suffer in our individual ways, suffering is universal. Source material for this work are found photographs, and the intimate size of the paintings references the intimate nature of the subject matter. The backgrounds of the paintings are repeatedly painted and sanded, to create a frame and backdrop for the imagery that is flat, yet rough with work and time. The bedding and windows are seen from different perspectives, but still indicate a scene of desolation and despair.