Artist Spotlight: Stephanie Cesare
Artist Spotlight: Stephanie Cesare
The therapeutic qualities of art are well known. It’s helped people with an array of different mental and emotional problems: from stress, to depression, to PTSD, and beyond. For Stephanie, art is her happy place; it helps her cope with her own mental illness and feel more fulfilled.
Growing up, Stephanie would paint with her aunt whenever she visited. She enjoyed these visits; it helped her foster a passion for art. She enjoyed her art classes in school and studied art all the way through high school. After graduating, she continues to study art on her own using online resources, especially online videos.
Today, Stephanie works as a peer-to-peer support specialist for the National Association of the Mentally Ill (NAMI). She’s also an outspoken advocate for those living with mental illness. “I like to talk about that because people don’t want to talk about it. I like to put that out there because there’s stigma towards people with mental illness. When people are able to see somebody thriving with mental illness, it makes a huge difference.”
While she’s worked with various media, including egg tempera, she prefers oil paint. She likes that it takes longer to dry, giving her more time to work, and that you can mix colors directly on whatever surface she’s painting on. While she doesn’t work in any particular style, she does enjoy using a lot of color in her works. She also transitioned from painting on canvas to painting on wood and has started making tables out of her work. She’s found she enjoys painting on wood and making pieces that serve both functional and aesthetic purposes. Currently, she makes small tables, ranging from in size from plantstands, nightstands, and end tables to small card tables. To protect her work from wear and tear, she applies a layer of epoxy resin to each tabletop. As she continues to create, she hopes to move into a larger space to make larger tables.
The therapeutic qualities of art are well known. It’s helped people with an array of different mental and emotional problems: from stress, to depression, to PTSD, and beyond. For Stephanie, art is her happy place; it helps her cope with her own mental illness and feel more fulfilled.
Growing up, Stephanie would paint with her aunt whenever she visited. She enjoyed these visits; it helped her foster a passion for art. She enjoyed her art classes in school and studied art all the way through high school. After graduating, she continues to study art on her own using online resources, especially online videos.
Today, Stephanie works as a peer-to-peer support specialist for the National Association of the Mentally Ill (NAMI). She’s also an outspoken advocate for those living with mental illness. “I like to talk about that because people don’t want to talk about it. I like to put that out there because there’s stigma towards people with mental illness. When people are able to see somebody thriving with mental illness, it makes a huge difference.”
While she’s worked with various media, including egg tempera, she prefers oil paint. She likes that it takes longer to dry, giving her more time to work, and that you can mix colors directly on whatever surface she’s painting on. While she doesn’t work in any particular style, she does enjoy using a lot of color in her works. She also transitioned from painting on canvas to painting on wood and has started making tables out of her work. She’s found she enjoys painting on wood and making pieces that serve both functional and aesthetic purposes. Currently, she makes small tables, ranging from in size from plantstands, nightstands, and end tables to small card tables. To protect her work from wear and tear, she applies a layer of epoxy resin to each tabletop. As she continues to create, she hopes to move into a larger space to make larger tables.