ABOUT KRISTEN
Abstract Artist
Kristen Stephen is a Toronto-based abstract artist whose practice blends instinct, materiality, and light. Using inks and diamond dust on canvas, she creates luminous works that explore the subconscious through layered colour and mark-making. Each painting offers a meditative experience, shifting with light and perspective to reveal new depths over time.
Born in Amherst, New York and raised in Canada, Kristen grew up surrounded by the arts, working in her mother’s gallery and engaging with Canadian artists who shaped her early love for painting. She went on to earn a BA in Fine Arts from OCAD University and a BA in Liberal Arts with a focus on Art History from Brock University, grounding her work in both practice and scholarship.
Kristen’s paintings have been exhibited at leading galleries and fairs, including The Artist Project, where her bold yet contemplative style drew the attention of collectors. Inspired by Helen Frankenthaler and colour field abstraction, Kristen approaches the canvas as an active material, soaking and layering pigments to create a sense of both harmony and spontaneity.
Her artworks are collected by those seeking not just beauty, but resonance — pieces that shift with the seasons, the hour, and the light, becoming enduring presences in the spaces they inhabit. Each painting is an invitation to pause, reflect, and connect with something both deeply personal and universally human.
Artist Statement
My work explores the language of abstraction through instinctual mark-making, layered colour, and the interaction of material and surface. Using inks on canvas, I create compositions that shift between harmony and spontaneity, allowing chance and control to coexist within each painting.
The process begins with dyeing or soaking the canvas, embedding colour into its fibers so that the surface itself becomes part of the work. Layers of fluid gestures follow, building depth and atmosphere while maintaining a sense of openness and movement.
I am inspired by artists who embraced material experimentation, particularly Helen Frankenthaler, whose approach to staining and transparency informs my own dialogue with the canvas. Light is also essential to my practice — subtle reflective elements are integrated to create surfaces that change with time of day and perspective, offering viewers an evolving experience.