Bio

Stephenie Purl Hamen is an abstract artist residing in Sun Prairie, WI, birthplace of Georgia O’Keeffe.  She lives at home with her college sweetheart and their two teenage boys, along with their pup, Mojo.

Hamen is a self-taught artist who worked for over a decade in the crafting industry for several major companies.  She has been creating since she was old enough to hold a crayon and a hammer and loves to make the world around her more beautiful.  Color is how she communicates with the world and conquers her battles with depression, anxiety, migraines, and fibromyalgia.

Artist Statement

Bright colors painted while listening to music – a requirement for me when I am working – is how I express myself. Often they are barely interchangeable in my mind. The music influences the art and the art influences the music choices. This is how I spend the bulk of my time and how I handle the external and internal forces that I, like so many others, battle daily. Chronic pain from fibromyalgia and migraines.  Anxiety.  Depression. These all impact the art that I create.

I have found that by expressing my feelings through art and using bright kaleidoscopes of color in my work, I am creating the world as I want it to be.  Shiny, happy, delicious, melodious, and rich in experiences.  There might be notes of the darkness and chaos underneath of it all, but joy must be the final expression and feeling exuded in the bulk of my work.  Giving into the less than desirable parts is not something I am prone to doing in my work, which in and of itself is a cathartic, magical way for me to work through whatever my current situation and status might be. 

For me, using bold and bright colors has always come naturally.  Recently, after sorting through my childhood artwork that my mom had saved since kindergarten, I noticed that rainbows were always present.  Maybe it was because it was the 1980’s.  Maybe it was the beauty of the colors.  Maybe it was the true wonder of an actual rainbow after the rain – it is a silver lining of sorts.  Whatever the underlying reason, color – and lots of them – permeated my art then as it does now.  Using a variety of media makes this possible – from acrylic to watercolor, soft pastels to crayons, paint markers to pencils – I love mixing different media in for different textures and feelings, bringing one color or mark more prominence than another, highlighting an area that was in the shadows before.  This story of color matters to me as much now as it did when I was drawing rainbows at the age of 5.

While my art is abstract in nature, without discernible figures or images, I hope that you find something in it that brings warmth and happiness to your heart. Thanks for learning just a little bit about what I put into each piece that I create.

Welcome!