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A Return to Painting: Stella Moore’s Path to Personal Expression

January 6, 2026
Stella Moore, Photographed by Urvi Joshi (BA ​’25)
Stella Moore. Photograph by Urvi Joshi (BA​’25)

The Bachelor of Arts (BA) Senior Studio is offered each year to Stamps BA students in their final year of study. In the class, students and instructors combine individual studio work with a collaborative project: the production of a fully self-directed show from start to finish, emphasizing the skills and practices associated with producing professional exhibitions. This year, students under the direction of Professor Nick Tobier and GSI Michaela Nichelle also invested time in getting to know one another, conducting a series of peer-to-peer interviews to learn more about the process, inspirations, and practice of their classmates. Over the next few months, we’re reprinting some of these interviews, which were combined into a collection featuring studio portraits by Urvi Joshi (BA​’25) and a cover by Riley Huhta (BA​’26).

Stella Moore

Interviewed by Emma Ostermeyer

Ostermeyer: How did you first get involved with art?

Moore: My first introduction to art was probably in the bathtub. My parents would take bowls full of shaving cream and food coloring, and then I was allowed to paint the bathtub walls with them. There is a picture of me sitting in the bathtub just surrounded by all of this colorful foam. I think I just had a lot of confidence when I was younger that I was an artist. And then I didn’t make anything for the longest time, until like sophomore year in high school. I don’t know why. But I went on a road trip with my mom to her high school reunion. I’m the youngest child, and it felt like one of the first times I was alone with her. And I was like, What are we going to talk about? I asked her about high school and it turns out that she was a really big painter. There is this painting at my grandma’s house that I’ve always loved. There are three women with green skin, and they’re tossing their heads back wailing. When I was growing up, I thought they were the most beautiful women I had ever seen. And it turned out to be a painting that my mother did in high school. So I had her start teaching me things in the car. I was like, ​‘Okay, teach me what you would have done as a warm up before painting.’ And so she had me doing blind contour drawings. And then COVID happened, and I was bored. I spent all my time obsessively painting self portraits because I was having a hard time with myself as a teenager. So that was the beginning of painting myself over and over again.

An oil painting depicting multiple figures in front of a field of corn
Vistors view the painting at Stamps Gallery

The work in this show is done in oils. Has that always been your preferred medium?

When I first started painting, I was using acrylics. And then I was just taking random things from around my house to use as a canvas. I had this really big sheet of drywall that my dad had gotten to make a chicken coop or something. It was like nine feet tall. It was my second or third painting ever, and I did a self portrait. I don’t know how good it was, but I felt so accomplished from painting something so huge. Other than painting, I took a weaving class here at Stamps. It is hard, but I really enjoyed it because it was so different from painting. Weaving is a lot about planning, and working an entirely different muscle that I don’t normally use. I used to really not like planning out my work. What usually happens is that I come up with an idea and then I write down the loose framework of that idea in my phone. After that I’ll take reference photos, collage them all together, and just get started on painting. But for this project, I’ve been trying to build that muscle of drawing and planning out something beforehand. I’ve found that doing these messy painting sketches really helps. In the show, you can see these smaller studies near the finished piece.

Three panels of a painting are placed side by side on a white background. The first panel on the left shows a dark purple tree with a fork hanging from its branches. A figure below, wrapped in a blanket, stares up at the fork. In front, another figure lies with its hands over its face. The middle panel shows a figure standing, clasping a sheet and reaching, while another figure crawls behind, grabbing at the standing figure. Behind them, another figure extends a hand while holding a shovel. In the last panel on the right, half of the crawling figure is shown emerging from a pond. Behind, the last figure is being helped out of a hole, carrying a dead chicken.
Hunting Party, Oil on Canvas, three panels, each 36″ x 48″

What was the inspiration behind this specific project?

The initial idea for this project came from my sophomore year review. I’ve been painting self portraits for a long time, and I find them interesting. I think they’re rich in a way that goes beyond myself. I got feedback from a professor in my review that if I hadn’t explained the ideology behind my work, that he would’ve thought it was narcissistic and ​“navel gazing.” So I wanted to make a painting that responded to that. I don’t think being self interested is inherently bad, because my work is in conversation with the world. I care deeply about the world around me, but we are all walking around in our own bodies and have to deal with that. There is merit to looking inwards. I wanted to make this painting where it could seem like I’m making fun of the figures, that they’re self absorbed and not doing real work in the field they’re sitting in. But what I really think of them is that it’s cool how excited they are, and how unembarrassed they are by their nakedness. When you’re dealing with your body and how you present to the world on your own, it can feel very isolating. So to paint this scene where there is a collective of selves dealing with their bodies together? That just feels like a warm image to me. A lot of my work has been a process of exploring my own gender identity and reading theory that has put words to experiences. Of feeling trapped in my skin and pinned down by the failure to perform a version of gender that I didn’t even really want. So a lot of my early work shows frustration and anguish, but while the figures in this work might have contorted or surprised faces, they’re not anguished. They are curious. I think that we are taught a lot of shame around our bodies, around sex, around being proud of ourselves. We’re being taught there is shame in every corner, and so to paint something like this with figures who are not ashamed felt very exciting.

A group of students assembled at the Stamps Gallery
Fall 2025 BA Senior Studio

Path Forward, the 2025 Stamps BA Senior Studio Exhibition, was on view at Stamps Gallery from December 3 – 13, 2025. The exhibition worked to weave meditations on nature, the inner and outer workings of our human bodies from the functional to the phenomenal, the paces of daily lives whether reading or rushing, in friendship or in family and exploring memories of real and imagined pasts as they intersect with the here and now. Featuring work in experimental video, fashion, painting, illustration and sculpture, Path Forward postulates stepping stones for near and possible futures.