Like generations before her, New Orleans artist Steph Reed is drawn to that golden hour of sunlight just moments before the evening glow disappears into night. She also loves to capture on canvas those towering summer clouds that rise quickly across the humid landscape. Her paintings of the Mississippi River, bayous and marshes are very much part of Louisiana’s continuing landscape tradition.
“We get really great sunsets here,” Reed says, “but I do love when those dramatic storms roll through. You get this really high contrast with the dark sky in the background, but it might be sunny where you are. I’ve never experienced that kind of lighting anywhere else. I like dramatic lighting, so this is the perfect place to be. All the humidity brings out those warm colors. I get very excited about the skies here.”
Reed, who studied art at Brown University, the Rhode Island School of Design and the Maine College of Art & Design, is not a native New Orleanian. She was born in Ohio and grew up on the south coast of Maine, and like so many young artists, she moved to the city after Hurricane Katrina. She now lives and works in her home studio in the city’s Seventh Ward. “I absolutely love it here,” she says.
Like most newcomers, Reed has the advantage of truly seeing the South Louisiana’s environment and landscape with fresh eyes and strong palette as she walks along the levees sketching and photographing industrial scenes on the river or the natural landscape as she paddles her canoe along the bayous and marshes. These sketches and photos are references for larger oil paintings back in her studio.
As to artistic influences, she mentions the usual classics – da Vinci, Matisse, Renoir — and a few Louisiana artists such as Clarence Millet and the brothers William and Ellsworth Woodward for their colors and brushwork. She also finds George Rodrigue’s early landscapes “beautiful and haunting.” And then there is Walter Anderson. “Though I don’t see much influence in my own work yet,” she says, “I love the looseness of Walter Anderson[‘s sketching style]. I hope I can channel some of that in a series of pen-and-ink drawings that I am starting.”
Reed describes her work as expressionistic and representational. “I like to layer paint to get that expressionist feel when you are close to the canvas,” she says. “And then you back up and it becomes more representational, realistic work. It’s never photorealism, we have photos to do that.”
The challenge for all artists is knowing when a painting is successful. Reed knows it’s working when “part of me feels that I’m being transported” back to that place. She hopes viewers get that same sense of being there.
“Emotionally,” she says. “I want to land somewhere slightly meditative, and I want to give people a calm sense of place. I want to make something beautiful as well something people can aesthetically appreciate.”
For additional information, visit stephreedworks.com.
