Emily Stedman, submitted artwork
Emily Stedman
Painting
New York, NY
Emily Stedman is a New York–based painter working primarily in watercolor. She received a BFA from Illinois Wesleyan University and an MFA from Pratt Institute. Her work has been exhibited at venues including the Brooklyn Museum, BRIC Arts Media, and the Historic Northampton Museum, as well as in exhibitions throughout New York. Stedman’s paintings focus on the natural world—flowers, branches, insects, and fragments of landscape—rendered through the fluid and unpredictable qualities of watercolor. Her work moves between observation and invention, allowing forms to emerge and dissolve through layered washes and areas of open paper. Her work is included in private collections and in the public collection of the City of Yonkers. She lives and works in New York City and maintains a studio at the YOHO Artists Building in Yonkers.
Works
Emily Stedman, submitted artwork
Flowers, seed pods, insects, and fragments of garden plants drift in and out of layered watercolor washes. Forms appear, dissolve, and re-emerge, moving between close observation and memory. I am drawn to watercolor for its fluidity and responsiveness. Pigment spreads and settles across the paper in ways that allow the image to unfold gradually. I often work wet-into-wet, letting color travel through the surface before guiding the forms back into focus. Although the imagery often begins with specific plants or garden fragments, the goal is not description but immersion. The paintings suggest environments where growth, fragility, and transformation coexist. Within these spaces, botanical forms become both intimate and expansive—small details of the natural world unfolding within larger fields of color and light.
