About Stephanie

Hello! I'm Stephanie — a watercolor artist, a psychologist, and someone who believes that the places we love become part of who we are.

 

I came to painting late. In 2019, some of my students asked what I did for fun — and I realized I had no idea. I'd always loved art, always admired the luminous transparency of watercolor. So I picked up a brush and never put it down.

What I didn't expect was how quickly painting became inseparable from my other life: twenty-five years of teaching psychology at a small liberal arts college. As a developmental psychologist with a PhD in child psychology, I've spent decades studying how people grow, how they attach, and how identity forms. One of the things I keep returning to is this: place is never just backdrop. The physical world we move through — especially during formative years — becomes woven into our sense of self.

I first read Willa Cather's My Ántonia in twelfth grade. I still have that copy. I've returned to it more times than I can count, and it may be my favorite book. Cather wrote, "Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again." That line has stayed with me for decades — and it's as close as I can get to explaining why I make what I make.

That insight is at the heart of my Memory Anchor Maps.

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Memory Anchor Maps

A Memory Anchor Map is a hand-painted, illustrated watercolor map of a specific place — capturing not just the geography, but the feeling of belonging to it. Each map is built around the landmarks, traditions, and shared rituals that give a place its particular soul.

I've made maps of college campuses and Maryland towns, and each one begins the same way: with deep listening. I research the places that matter most — the chapel that marks the center of campus, the woods where students go to think, the traditions that are passed down year after year and that students carry with them long after graduation. Then I paint them, by hand, in watercolor.

As someone who has spent her career at a small liberal arts college, I understand intimately how these places work. I know what it means to feel called back to a campus — how a particular path, a particular view, a particular tree can suddenly return you to who you were at eighteen. This goes beyond nostalgia to tap a deeper identity.

 

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More of What I Make

Memory Anchor Maps are my most deliberate work, but they're not my only work. Every year I paint a watercolor desk calendar — small paintings of everyday beauty that mark the passage of time. I create custom home portraits, originally for realtors and now

Memory Anchor Maps are my most deliberate work, but they're not my only work. Every year I paint a watercolor desk calendar — small paintings of everyday beauty that mark the passage of time. I create custom home portraits, originally for realtors and now for anyone who wants their home remembered in paint. And I'm always exploring: floral studies, place paintings, pieces that begin simply as a love of color and light.

In addition to my website, my work can be found at the Carroll County Arts Council Gift Shop, at several college bookstores, at Kelly + Co in Westminster, and at Unwined in Sykesville, Maryland.

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A Little More About Me

I grew up in Minnesota — Willa Cather country in spirit, if not exactly in geography — and now live in Westminster, Maryland, with my husband and two children. I teach at McDaniel College, where my students keep asking me questions I haven't finished answering yet.

In 2023, I was selected for an artists' residency at Château d'Orquevaux in France and was awarded the prestigious Diderot grant to attend. My work has been recognized with a People's Choice award at the Carroll County Arts Center Members Show, and is held in corporate collections and galleries.

Marc Chagall wrote that "art must be an expression of love or it is nothing." I believe that. Every map, every portrait, every painting begins there.

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References

Cather, W. (1918). My Ántonia. Houghton Mifflin.
Chagall, M. "Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing." Widely attributed to Marc Chagall.