Stephanie Morton-Millstein

“Creating art isn’t about thinking your way through it... it’s about feeling your way through it.  The feelings then translate into a body of work.”

––Stephanie Morton-Millstein, Painter

Los Angeles-based painter and ceramicist Stephanie Morton-Millstein explores cycles––of nature, personal identity, mood, and consciousness. Morton-Millstein lets the art guide her, allowing it to reveal accidents and purpose. Her abstract expressionist style is intuitive, often materializing in moments of intense clarity and explosive creativity. Morton-Millstein’s paintings and ceramics emerge through a full-body process, wherein she moves between mediums, layering and sculpting until she feels complete. Her process is diligent, often taking up to six months.

Art has always been a practice of self-grounding for Morton-Millstein. As a child, she felt drawn to photography as a mode of documentation. She remembers feeling an intense urge to take pictures of every detail of her home, intimately aware of the passage of time, change, and loss. She cites photographer Diane Arbus, abstract-expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler, and sculptor Louise Bourgeois as inspiring her work. Morton-Millstein is passionate about keeping art in public schools, working as a volunteer art teacher, activist and advocate for equality in education.