By Tom Groenfeldt , September 15th, 2022

A conversation with painter Stephanie Trenchard

Stephanie Trenchard is more widely known as a glass artist, which means that some people are surprised to learn that she’s been painting for more than 25 years. She described her style as “more about being an object itself, than being a record,” she said. “I would call them color-field paintings with a focus on hue contrast.”

Trenchard explained the concept further. 

“You have holes of color markers like red, blue or yellow that are indicators of the depth. So cool recedes, and warm comes forward,” she said. “So, you’ll have these markers of where the space is in terms of hue. It’s not a literal sense of space – it’s intuitive, just a sense of space. You’re getting a sense of depth.”

As Trenchard works, she paints the color squares first because she doesn’t want them to interfere with the story, like being placed at the end of a path. She wants them to have a random sensibility.

“I put all the squares in first, and then I start to put the narrative in – the story which has perspective and depth,” she said. “I’ve got space being created in two ways: one just with hue, and then one with actual story about perspective. Our eyes tell us that story; we know it.”

Trenchard used a new painting of various colored squares randomly arrayed on a dark-yellow background as an example. 

“This relies on hues alone,” she said. “There is no story.”

Her paintings, she said, are really a form of exploration, both for the viewer and for her as the artist. 

“Maybe, at some point, I will drop the landscape and just do the abstract,” Trenchard said. “I have one in the studio that’s just squares next to each other. I’m playing with the idea of pattern, how far you can take it, how you can weave pattern into a narrative, how much pattern can just stand on its own. Those are the questions I’m investigating.”

A textile designer for 10-plus years in San Francisco, Trenchard credits her past career for imprinting on her work.

“I had pattern on my mind very much when I started painting,” she said.

To learn more about painting luminosity and depth, she studied the work of English romantic painter J.M.W. Turner. 

“I am very aware of surface and luminosity and light,” Trenchard said. “I think that is the carry-through thread that connects my paintings to my glass sometimes, although my glass tends to be more figurative, and I don’t do a lot of figurative paintings.”

To create her landscape paintings, Trenchard works only from photographs that she’s taken, and she paints what’s in the photo and does not deviate from it. When people make things up in landscapes, she said, the work often turns into clichés.

“Even if I don’t like it in a composition, I stick with the photograph,” she said. “I’m almost like a robot.”

The Popelka Trenchard Glass studio is a busy place – too busy to focus on painting – so she has a painting studio at the Tambourine Lounge on North 2nd Avenue in Sturgeon Bay. Her room there is private – no one else may come or go – and minimalist. It contains one chair, a teapot and a single tea cup. 

“There’s nothing else to do but paint,” Trenchard said. “There are no distractions, so it is a very dense time.”

Her description of what it’s like during those times when she’s in the “creative zone” sounds almost like an out-of-body experience. 

“I’m just working, and I can actually, literally watch my hands paint,” Trenchard said. “And then if I really stick to the photograph, my eyes go back and forth, back and forth. Your intuitive sense knows how to do it from experience. And then I can step back, and wow!” 

Her work is available at Popelka Trenchard Glass, 64 S. 2nd Ave. in Sturgeon Bay, as well as at SŌMI Gallery, 45 S. 3rd Ave. in Sturgeon Bay, and at Edgewood Orchard Galleries, 4140 Peninsula Players Road in Fish Creek.

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