Stephanie Dudd, born in 1986, is an artist based in Hamburg, Germany. She studied teaching to become an art teacher at the Leuphana Universität Lüneburg. Her artistic focus lies in the areas of abstract painting and collage making.
How did you get into art?
I drew a lot as a child and took part in several painting competitions. Later on, I chose art as my main subject at school and enjoyed spending time at the “Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg” in my hometown. After studying to become an art teacher and then working as a teacher for several years in Hamburg, I wanted to again create more space for my own practice. I now share a studio space with three friends in Hamburg’s Ottensen district. Since last year, I have been mainly focusing on painting again and started publishing my work on my Instagram account, stephhh.art, and on my homepage, as well as presenting it at locations and art markets in the city.
How would you describe your style? What makes your art special?
Fluid, finely nuanced, intuitive, feminine, and process-oriented:
When creating, I am particularly interested in allowing the painting process to develop in interaction with the paint, canvas, or paper. I enjoy working on an untreated canvas, allowing the paint to flow, exploring the interconnection between the paint and the background, and playing with subtle contrasts and harmonies. It is important to me to create an aesthetic whole that I find balanced yet intriguing, one that stimulates the viewer’s senses and evokes personal associations.
How do you go about developing your work?
I like to work intuitively and frequently incorporate experimental methods into my artistic process. Continually reproducing a certain type of artwork in the same way is less appealing to me. Even though I use similar techniques in my paintings, I often vary particular steps of the process. I love the moments of surprise that come about when using experimental methods, as well as the process of refining them – so it’s usually a mixture of coincidence and intention. Rarely, I use my iPad to digitally plan out the steps in advance. But even then, the implementation phase tends to produce something different to what I had envisioned beforehand.
Who or what influences you?
Everything visual, ranging from fine arts to everyday culture and architecture. I am inspired by works from the likes of Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Kooning and Cy Twombly, as well as many contemporary artists like Martha Jungwirth and Arne Quinze. The aesthetics of everyday items, such as ceramics, textiles and run-down façades or the flowing structures designed by architect Zaha Hadid, are visually appealing to me and surely influence me subconsciously.
The titles of my works are often inspired by song lyrics. I also use everyday phrases I picked up somewhere along the way and associate them with my artworks while painting or after finishing them.
What are you planning to do next?
I just created a homepage and am about to publish my first digital catalogue featuring works for sale via my newsletter. The “HAAM (Hamburg Affordable Art Market)” will take place in “Neues Amt Altona” from October 27th to October 30th and will include a few of my works. In the studio, I would like to continue with some large-scale paintings on canvas (“The big five”) and some smaller works on canvas and paper while making collages, ‘integrating’ embroidered words and lines into my artworks and experimenting with neutral and colourful or neon shades.
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