Stephanie Weber’s rich abstract paintings are studies in contrast between the rigid geometry of her rectilinear panels and the richly layered colors and textures they carry. Called a sensual minimalist, she cites the spiritual abstractionists Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt as prime influences and aims to create what she calls “an edgy balance” among the elements in her lush, pared-down paintings. Her work is inspired by nature in the broadest sense – be it earth, or what’s under the earth, or sky or flesh or bone or hair. “Art,” she says, “gives breadth to what you already know so you know it at a deeper level. Or it makes you think in some way you’ve never thought before.”
A Berkeley resident who studied with Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff and Nathan Oliveira at the University of California at Los Angeles in the early ’60s, Weber comes out of the Bay Area abstract figurative tradition. Her pieces are in many museums, among them the Philadelphia Museum of Art and San Francisco’s Fine Arts Museums.
