about evelyn stettin

Evelyn Stettin is a Los Angeles-based artist, working in visual art, writing and performance. Stettin has an interdisciplinary background, beginning her artistic training in dance and voice. In her work, one can see the powerful influence of artists like Marc Rothko and Franz Kline as well as the visual poetry of dance and the calligraphic gesture of Chinese brush painting.

In both her visual work and her writing, Stettin weaves strands of the unconscious into visceral and emotional experience. Using the language of dreams, narrative and archetype, her work pulls out aspects of our individual and collective psyches.

Her series of paintings entitled "Genesis" explores spiritual and essential moments of archetypal experience and will be on exhibit this fall in both Philadelphia and Irvine. This series has been published in Panim el Panim, a Marymount Institute Press Publication. A review of the book describes the work as:

"colourful, robust, bold, abstract paintings . . . meant to convey emotional rather than intellectual consonance. The author . . . intend(s) mystery. And . . .achieve(s) it handsomely."
-Mordechai Ben-Dat, Canadian Jewish News Review

As in her more abrasive writing and performance work, Stettin’s careful use of form in her paintings highlights each shape as meaningful and potent. In this sparse landscape, each form reveals itself fully, eliciting an emotional reaction in viewers that is heightened by a range of color that is full and complicated.

Currently, Stettin is developing a play, Box, Window, Door, that is the story of one woman’s spiral journey through the box (imprisonment), the window (gaining perspective) and the door (moving onto her own ground). As in all of her work, transformation, healing and discovery play a central role.