Not even a broken arm can keep Kathryn Stedham out of her studio, where she is currently working on an 8½-by-9-foot landscape in the uncompromising style that lends her work distinction.
Stedham was trained in the style of academic realism with an emphasis on classical painting and considers herself among a diminishing number of contemporary painters who emulate the techniques of Old Masters like Rembrandt and Caravaggio. Working in oil, Stedham starts with the darkest tones and slowly paints in the light as the layers and depth build on the canvas. If she is not pleased with the result, she will go back in and start all over again. “That’s how I get that look,” explains Stedham, who often covers the whole canvas six times, entirely concealing the layers beneath. 
Raven Tree, Grand Canyon, oil on canvas, 48 x 60”
Stedham paints in the alla prima style, which translates to “in an instant” or “at once.” “Essentially, it’s a direct style of painting, painting ‘wet on wet,’” Stedham explains. Working on such large canvases, there is no preventing the paint from drying, but every time the artist revisits a work she “reactivates the surface and paints back into the paint.” That is why her finished works retain the feel of a plein air painting.
Stedham at work in her studio.
Stedham paints throughout the arid deserts of New Mexico, but the northern part of the state and the Galisteo Basin-home of the art-steeped town where Stedham lived before moving to Santa Fe-are especially dear to her heart. Stedham visits a site she wants to paint many times. Sometimes she does a plein air study, but often she paints solely from memory. A long-time practicing Zen Buddhist, Stedham has cultivated the ability to sit for hours on end and often does, observing the landscape, how the light changes and, in her words, “letting it infuse and seep into” her. She relies on that impression, and that same stamina, in the studio where she creates her work. 
Sunset at Chimney Rock, oil on canvas, 48 x 60”
Stedham grew up in coastal Virginia and relates the vastness of the ocean with that of the desert. “I kind of see the desert as a giant ocean without an ocean,” she says. “I see the landforms as giant ships passing, leviathans emerging from an enormous ocean floor. I feel comfortable in spaces that are both vast and silent. The sense of expansiveness moves me. I can breathe here.”
Twilight Moon Over Two Mesas, oil on canvas, 30 x 36”
Last year her show at Blue Rain Gallery was called Enduring West—her reaction to suggestions that she name it Vanishing West. This year’s show, True West, speaks to Stedham’s conception of her work.
“I want to show the authentic West as seen through my eyes,” says Stedham. “I look at my subject from a personal stance. They are all places I have stood before and seen with my own eyes, and the paintings are my interpretation from my memory. This is my ‘true West’ right now.” —
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