Contributed by Sharon Butler / This March I am delighted to welcome Stephanie McMahon to the Two Coats of Paint Residency Program. Stephanie lives and works in Alfred, New York, where she is a professor at SUNY Alfred and co-founder of the Alfred/Düsseldorf MFA in Painting and Residency Program. Up in Western New York, she is surrounded by an unruly and tangled 17+ acres of forests, fields, and ravines. While her rural environment has informed her paintings, it is the visual form of the twisting branches, leaf shapes, and shifting color that most fascinates her. Stephanie’s primary interest is not depicting the landscape, but the activity of painting itself.
The brushstrokes, each of a different solid color, appear to undulate, overlap, and twirl as they weave confidently back and forth in the picture plane, tracking the movement of the painter’s body through space. To a non-painter, they seem carefree, an impression reinforced by the bright palette and translucent paint. But painters who make this type of stroke – Patricia Treib and Andrea Belag are two – understand the care that goes into seeming effortless. Stephanie’s works are, in fact, carefully plotted with masked shapes and edges to create the illusion of overlapping forms. At times, like Matisse, she scrubs out parts of the painting with solvent and sponges so that she can repaint the areas without any appearance of correction or struggle.
Mary Heilmann and Karin Davie are among the artists she has long admired, and recently she has zoned in on Paul Klee. Throughout her career, Stephanie has alternated between different formats: shaped supports, three-dimensional paper set-ups, and traditional rectangular canvases. Variety has enabled her to explore painting while fusing abstraction and physical form, but she ultimately returned to the rectangular format. During her residency, Stephanie will be sharing new paintings and some work from “Brush,” her recent solo show, which was on view at the Lake George Art Project Courthouse Gallery in Lake George, New York, at the end of 2025.
About the artist: Stephanie McMahon (b.1976, Rochester, NY) lives and works in Alfred, NY. McMahon earned an MFA from The University of Texas at Austin and a BFA from The School of Art and Design at Alfred University. She has been included in exhibitions at Galerie plan. d., Düsseldorf, Germany; Drawer, NY; Heaven Gallery, Chicago, IL; Northern Illinois Art Museum; Tang Contemporary, Beijing, China; Gravity Gallery, North Adams, MA; and Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, NY among others. McMahon is recipient of the New York State Council on the Arts Tri- County Artist Grant, Memorial Art Gallery Award of Excellence and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts Individual Artist Grant. She recently completed an artist residencies at the International Center for the Arts in Monte Castello di Vibio, Italy and Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. Her work has been reviewed and published in Art Maze Magazine, The Boston Globe, Hyperallergic, and New American Paintings Blog and Magazine.
Stephanie McMahon, Two Coats of Paint Artist Residency, 22-19 41st Avenue, 6th Floor, Studio #10, Long Island City, NY. March 8 – 13, 2026. Please join us for an Open Studio on Wednesday, March 11, 5 – 7pm. For more information, or to arrange a studio visit, please contact: STAFF@twocoatsofpaint.com. Please put STUDIO VISIT in the subject line. Follow Stephanie on Instagram @stephemcmahon
Upcoming shows and a workshop:
“Are You Experienced,” with Patrick Brennan and Linda Sormin. Pratt Munson Gallery, 1200 State Street in Utica, NY. Opens in September 2026.
Stephanie McManon and Jenny Kemp, DeVos Art Museum, Northern Michigan University. Opens next spring.
Stephanie will also be leading a painting workshop in Italy this summer with Umbria Contemporary Arts
Studio Playlist:
“True crime podcasts are my guilty pleasure…Dateline, Criminal, American Scandal. Also on rotation are This is Love, Snap Judgement, Telepathy Tapes, Sound and Vision and lots of audiobooks.”
About the author: Sharon Butler is a painter, publisher of Two Coats of Paint, and director of the Two Coats of Paint Residency Program.
