Different Strokes Mother, Daughter use separate styles to make each a better painter

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Jessica Stammen’s brush dances across her canvases, trying to capture the shadow of a pine tree or a reflection in the water before it is gone. In a rusty red riverbank or a streak of clouds you can sense her urgency – light is fleeting and she’s on its trail. With a wistful palette, full of the colors of sunsets and shadows, she pursues the landscape in broad, fast strokes.

Jessica’s mother, Jo Ellen, works with the precision of a draftsman. She’s able to coax individual blades of grass or pinpoint-small droplets of water out of fat, powdery pastels. On giant pieces of watercolor paper, an eagle snatches a fish from a lake; a father loon claims his territory, flapping his wings and sending up a veil of spray. From across the living room in the Stammens’ Camden home, Jo Ellen’s pastels look like blown-up photographs. The colors sing and the birds seem ready to fly off the paper.

Though they share a home (summers), a love of nature and a last name, the Stammens’ styles are distinctly different. In those differences, mother and daughter find strength and motivation to push their artwork further.

“Our work is very parallel, but she’s a lot looser and freer than I am,” Jo Ellen Stammen said. “It is great having two [artists in the family]. It’s a really solitary profession – a lot of artists don’t have a lot of interaction. It’s always good to have another pair of eyes.”

“And not someone who’s just like you,” Jessica added.

The Stammens’ works will be on display in “Loons, Eagles and Landscapes” from July 6 to 11 at the Sea Studio Gallery in Tenants Harbor. An opening reception will take place from 5 to 8 p.m. tomorrow at the gallery.

A week and a half before the exhibit, Jessica was busy framing her canvases in the kitchen of the Stammens’ rented home. Artwork was everywhere – Jo Ellen’s huge, framed pieces were propped against the walls and blocking the fireplace; Jessica’s framed paintings were hanging and stacked on tables. In her tiny studio, which doubles as a computer room, a makeshift easel held a pastel awaiting Jo Ellen’s finishing touches.

Though they still had a lot of work to do, the air in the Stammen household was alive with anticipation, not anxiety. Jessica has committed to making painting her livelihood. As a 20-year-old junior at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City, this is her first “real” show. For Jo Ellen, who worked for years as a children’s book illustrator, the show is a turning point. Two years ago, she stopped taking illustration contracts to explore the possibility of a career in fine art.

“I think it took me many years to be able to stand up and say, ‘This is what I do; this is what I love to do,'” Jo Ellen said. “Before, I think I didn’t have the confidence that my style was really strong and marketable and that there were people who were looking for it.”

At first, she thought people wouldn’t respond to her works because of their almost hyper-realism. Once she started thinking about what she wanted, however, things started to fall into place.

“This is what I do best,” Jo Ellen said of her realist work. “Some people are going to come and they aren’t going to like it. You can’t please everybody.”

“And you’ve got to please yourself,” Jessica added. “Each artist has his own vision. If you try and alter that, especially if someone’s saying you’re not good enough, if you know you aren’t being true to yourself, you can’t stand up against that.”

Jessica knows this firsthand. Some of her classmates have “knocked her around” for being too sentimental, for painting lakes, rivers and landscapes that remind her of home. One of her professors forbade her to paint anything representational in his class. Rather than grouse about painting something she didn’t want to paint, Jessica tried the abstract techniques to her advantage.

“My professors challenge me to not take what I see for granted,” Jessica said. “Seeing things with our hearts and not just with our minds – that’s a very important part of my work. I feel sometimes that my head and my heart are so far beyond what my hands are capable of right now.”

Jo Ellen knows what her hands are capable of. Since 1989, she has illustrated 14 children’s books and collected accolades along the way. Smithsonian Magazine named one of her books the best natural history book of the year. She was one of 10 finalists for the prestigious Caldecott Award and won the Lupine Award of Maine. Despite her success, she felt something was missing.

“I thought, ‘I’m really doing other people’s thoughts and ideas,'” she said. “There was something that wasn’t complete. … I was getting kind of bored with the process of children’s books.”

She also felt confined by the size of the drawings. She started searching around for something bigger, and found one distributor that imported huge rolls of watercolor paper from France. The larger format allowed her to create more intricate shading and finer designs with her pastels, each of which is about as wide as a large thumb.

“It has allowed me to do a lot more detail,” she said. “There’s a lot more going on in the picture.”

Jo Ellen remembered that people responded more to her book illustrations of animals than any other subject, so she decided to stick to that. On the lake where her husband and sons go fishing, she found endless inspiration in the loons there, and then a pair of eagles caught her attention.

“Loons and eagles, you know, I just got hooked on what’s going on in my life spiritually and … they’re real symbols of strength, faithfulness,” she said. “They’re real family animals.”

Both Jessica and Jo Ellen are quick to point out that spirituality is an important part of their work. Though their subjects aren’t particularly religious, they say that their Christian beliefs give their work a sense of focus.

“I think as an artist, you have to be inspired by something outside of yourself because art is such a powerful thing – it’s more than just you,” Jessica said.

“We’re not talking just churchy pictures,” Jo Ellen added, “we’re believing that there’s so much more.”

By “more,” Jo Ellen means that there’s more to the picture than the obvious. It could be the clarity of sunlight on an eagle’s head or the way the lavender sunlight brightens the treetops in one of Jessica’s paintings. What a piece represents is more important than what it depicts.

In Jo Ellen’s work, there often is a greater meaning than, say, two eagles in a nest or a loon turning its egg. For instance, eagles are said to have vision that is eight times more powerful than humans.

“All animals are afraid of storms, but the eagle flies at such an angle that it carries it above a storm,” Jo Ellen said. “I like to compare that with our lives. Every problem that comes along, I like to think we can rise above it. Those are the kinds of things I want to get across.”

While many artists would cringe at the idea of their art being used as a corporate icon, Jo Ellen says the message in her art – strength, vision, overcoming adversity – would fit well in a business setting. She’s not afraid to admit that she wants to sell her pastels. She loves the creative aspect of it, but she doesn’t feel so attached to her work that she can’t share it with other people.

”A lot of people would look down on this and say you aren’t really an artist if you’re thinking about the business side,” Jo Ellen said. “You should care. It’s your work.”

“It’s your life,” Jessica replied.

When she worked as an illustrator, Jo Ellen said, she never took control of the business aspect of her work. Then she read “How to Survive and Prosper as an Artist: Selling Yourself without Selling Your Soul” by Caroll Michels, which helped her come to terms with the financial side of art.

Though neither wants to sell her soul to sell her art, both mother and daughter like the idea of sharing their art and making a living at it.

“Art isn’t just for yourself,” Jessica said. “You love that fellowship if someone responds to what you’ve created.”

As a mother-daughter team, Jo Ellen and Jessica have a built-in response system. They’re always bouncing ideas off each other and inspiring each other to try new things. The family plans to build a lakeside house with a studio big enough for both of them, but until then, they’re content to just work under the same roof.

“We support each other, I think,” Jo Ellen said.

Studio Gallery is located on Route 131, a mile past the village of Tenants Harbor. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily. For information, call 372-8521 or 832-5152.