Christine Stettner explores themes surrounding freedom and independence in her acrylic and mixed-media paintings. Depicting stories that center upon interpersonal relationships, perceptions, experiences, and unspoken questions, Stettner creates an interplay between subject and technique, utilizing experimentation but also consciously presenting an idea through her medium. In her abstractions, an unfamiliar form of the images, the viewer is encouraged to behold different expressive possibilities.
Regardless of the provocations that she intends to evoke, playfulness is at the core of Stettner’s work; she is chasing the mysteries of humanity that lay hidden just beneath the surface of our illusory world. Popular figures in Stettner’s pieces include the fantastical and the whimsical, as she layers her work, often brimming with translucent blue and red pigments, with rich imagery of lithe, dancing figures, insects and plant forms which take on human qualities, and the otherworldly. “For me, painting is a world of colors, shapes, sounds, and language. The imagination has wings.” Stettner is based in Germany, where she has exhibited extensively.
