About Stephanie Hatch

Stephanie Hatch is a multi media artist, working in the Pacific Northwest. She has been exhibiting her work in the United States for over 2 decades. In 2006 Stephanie received her BA in Art from Southern Oregon University where she focused on painting, drawing, and black and white photography. 

Hatch is self-represented, but works closely with Blind Insect Gallery in Portland, OR.  For more information regarding press requests, purchases, commissions, and gallery showings, please email stephaniehatchart@gmail.com. Select Originals and prints can be purchased through Blind Insect Gallery.

As a collage painter I’ve used found images in my work for many years in various ways.  Beginning in college, I incorporated collaged images into my work as a way to challenge societal expectations of women depicted in advertising.  Over the years, that progressed to celebrating the inherent power of women, inspired by my close relationships to my mom and grandma when I was a child. I was interested in themes of identity, transformation, and the confluence of personal history with myths and fairytales. I used found images to tell my stories simply because I don’t like drawing realistically. I’m more excited about color, composition, texture, and the suggested meanings that arise from placing disparate images next to one another.

In 2021 my art changed dramatically, as I started creating my own painted collage elements instead of relying solely on found images.  I call these painted pieces “color paths” (saturated, multi-colored, long, flowing brushstrokes on paper) which represent growth and the possibility of magic, transformation, and energy.  I added colorful and holographic hair extensions to my work as a way to extend the “color paths” off the art panel. I moved away from work that relied on figural representation and dark-color palettes and returned to the vibrant technicolor candy colors of my 1980’s and 90’s childhood.  I started using landscape symbolically, traversing surreal terrains to revisit my childhood joys of color, glitter, and fantasy stories packed with epic journeys.

To understand my love of nature and its presence in my work, it’s important to know that I grew up in a beautiful rural setting in Southern Oregon, surrounded by towering evergreen-forest covered mountains, where the blackened night sky was heavy with stars, and my days were filled with playing make-believe outside.  Lisa Frank, Rainbow Brite, Lady Lovely Locks, and strange children’s movies like The Hugga Bunch, Return to Oz, and The NeverEnding Story can all be seen as influences in my landscape work as I venture to capture the magic that exists just on the other side of the mountain.