About Artist
Stephanie lives in Lyttelton on the Peninsula, an area she loves and is constantly inspired by. She has relocated from Hamilton where she worked in education teaching art in schools. She has many fond memories of students and their successes.
As an award winning artist, she exhibits nationally and receives commissioned work. Stephanie also teaches art to small groups and runs workshops.
Stephanie Crisp paints in strong acrylic colour.
Her work, often described as stunning, is beautifully constructed and balanced, often telling stories of places she has travelled to and areas she has lived in.
She sometimes enhances work through collaged materials and will also use embroidery to intensify the surface quality of a work.
Community Involvement
Past President of the Waikato Society of Arts
Member of the Hamilton Community Arts Council
Chair of the Friends of the Waikato Museum of Art and History
Member of the Museum and Libraries Monitoring Group
Chair of the Banks Peninsula Community Arts Council
Currently I am not involved with any organisations. I am enjoying the freedom of having time to contribute to fund raisers, workshops, providing work for calendars etc.
Awards & Major Exhibitions
1st Solo - Waikato Society of Arts. Hamilton
Community and the Collection - Waikato Museum of Art and History
Women's Suffrage Exhibition - Waikato Museum of Art and History
Other Solo Exhibitions Include
Heritage Gallery. Cambridge
Splashy. Hamilton.
Te Wananga O Aotearoa Te Awamutu
L’Estrange Gallery. Sumner. Christchurch
Oxford Gallery. Canterbury
Alfred Memelink Artspace. Petone. Wellington
Galleries Representing Stephanie Crisp
Artbox, Christchurch
Artspace Gallery, Petone
Oxford Gallery
Gallery De Novo, Dunedin
Heritage Gallery, Cambridge
Inspirit Gallery, Waikato
Kura Gallery, Wellington
Little River Gallery, Banks Peninsula
Magma Gallery, Christchurch
Soeur Design, Christchurch
You develop over the years, you have a strong sense of form, you have a desire to record put paint down on paper you want to draw things you see things differently you have to be open to looking at something and finding something beautiful about it...
I'm Stephanie Crisp and I'm a working artist. I've always painted. In fact, art has always been part of my everyday life.
There was always paper, paints for me as a child. The school I went to didn't have a an art program so I'd never really thought of going to art school. So it was just a progressive thing that happened and I just learned very quickly to see beauty in ordinary things. I eventually went to Teachers College got into teaching and ended up teaching art for many many years. I learned off the students and they learned off me.
When I think about my own work apart from taking the beauty of some of those students, some of the way they saw things, I did always have a strong structural feel about my work, and you can see that in some of the port paintings - you know I love architecture, I love looking at buildings, I love light and shade, but at the same time I love the freedom of putting paint on to a knife and creating art that way.
I get my ideas from day-to-day life. I like strong color. The tools I use are brushes, palette knives (I love palette knives!), my hands sometimes... I'll use anything paint on. Anything that can sustain an image - I'll use.
To me art is my passion, it's a way of expressing myself when I'm feeling lonely or down or happy, that will put me back on the right track.
My favorite subjects to paint, I think, the boats. I saw in newspaper once a photograph of a fishing boat and I've still got it! It must be about 30 years old and that has formed the basis or the template for a lot of my work the shape of that fishing boat just beautiful...