Stephanie Rose

Stephanie Rose chooses the subtlety of a desert landscape like those east of Powell, to the grandeur of Yellowstone National Park to the west.

She’s inspired to paint outdoors — her “field studies” — finishing her paintings in the studio, where she said being an abstract artist allows her to paint so much more than just what can be seen.

“There is so much more in the landscape than what is seen,” she said. “There’s sound, aromas, textures — in the abstract paintings there’s an opportunity to incorporate the scene and unseen, memory and what the scene evokes for me emotionally.”

Now this Powell painter has reached another rung on the ladder of artistic success.

Rose, who has painted professionally for 11 years and honed her painting skills at Oberlin and then Northwest College, will have her paintings in an independent gallery show for the first time.

The show Quietude runs June 1-July 1 at Turner Fine Art in Jackson, featuring works from gallery owner and renowned Jackson artist Kathryn Mapes Turner, a Cody Art Show regular, as well as Rose.

“My work has been seen in the northern Wyoming, southern Montana area, so to be able to reach a new audience in Jackson is a great thing,” she said.

Rose and Turner met last August when both were part of the Brinton Museum Bighorn Rendezvous, which includes an auction and art sale, last summer in Big Horn.

“We kindled a connection and she invited me to show at her gallery,” Rose said. “Her works are very quiet and elegant.”

Rose’s works focus mostly on the landscapes of the region, although she also pulls from a lifetime of travel, which included growing up in Hong Kong while her parents worked at an international school, and a career in sustainable agriculture that took her to Norway, Thailand, Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin. But it was when she moved to Wyoming, she said, that she became inspired to create art. Now, some of her art hangs at the Cody Country Art League and the Carbon County Arts Guild and Depot Gallery in Red Lodge.

Her love of the outdoors has led her to be an organizer of plain air artists events in the area, where a number of artists will get together to create art outside.

“That’s been a great way to meet other artists, critique each others works, visit new places,” she said.

Her favorite place to paint outdoors?

“Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area is on the top of my list. Cottonwood Canyon, up in the Bighorns,” she said. “I tend to go east more than west, I think that’s because I’m drawn to the very harsh, dry, desert landscapes more than the Alpine. You see that in some of my work, the big open spaces. I’m not really looking at grandeur, I’m more interested by subtlety.”

Now she’s hoping a wider audience will appreciate that subtlety.