LOCAL PAINTING PRODIGY EMBRACES AN ARTISTIC LIFE Writer / Christy Heitger-Ewing Photographer / Kevin Swan
s children, we often form an identity in one way or another. For example, we are known perhaps as the athlete, the animal lover or the reader. Stephanie Paige Thomson, a Brownsburg native, was deemed the artist in her family.
artists such as C.W. Mundy.
“I was always drawing as a kid,” says Thomson, one of five girls. “My sisters all had their own thing, but mine was art.”
She describes feeling overwhelmed with all the information thrown at her during the seven-hour class, without a clue as to the various techniques to which she was being introduced.
Though she began painting master copies of Van Gogh and Monet at age 14, it wasn’t until she graduated from high school in 2015 after being home schooled that she realized she still had a lot to learn. Though she longed for formal training, she didn’t necessarily want to attend a traditional art school where she would have to study a variety of mediums. She wanted to focus solely on painting. Therefore, she sought out workshops and local master
“I’ll never forget walking into my first class,” Thomson says. “I showed up, 17 years old, the youngest one there. Everyone else was a professional painter or had been doing it a while.”
“It leveled any ego I had,” recalls Thomson, who was on the verge of tears by the end of the day. However, the experience didn’t deter her. “I told my mom, ‘I don’t know anything about painting, but I’m going to figure this
out,” Thomson says. “It was a huge blessing to start what would become my career in that mindset.” Over the course of the next year, Thomson enrolled in six intense, five-day workshops in various parts of the country. “For the next four years I took classes and workshops, treating it like my college education because that’s what it was,” says Thomson, who loves to paint people first and foremost, followed by landscapes and still-life images. In April of 2016 Thomson received a scholarship to attend a Portrait Society of America conference, which attracts huge names in the art world from all over the country. “I was 17 sitting in this demonstration hall
BrownsburgMagazine.com / OCTOBER 2020 / BROWNSBURG MAGAZINE / 27
