My Story & Process

I’m Marcie Stammen, an Ohio-based artist working in mixed media and oil. I’m drawn to the things that ask us to pause—a face, a flower, a fragment of an old hymn, or the beauty found in an ordinary moment.

My work moves between figures, florals, and sacred imagery, exploring beauty, faith, resilience, and the layers of experience we carry beneath the surface.

Faith is an important part of who I am and naturally finds its way into my work—sometimes unmistakably, other times quietly. I don’t want to tell the viewer exactly what to see. I want to create enough space for them to discover something of their own.

A Life That Found Its Way Back to Art

I studied illustration at Columbus College of Art & Design and earned my BFA in Graphic Design from Miami University. But my path to becoming a working artist wasn’t a straight one.

Years filled with family, work, and the beautiful—and sometimes overwhelming—demands of ordinary life eventually brought me back to painting with a deeper perspective.

That life comes with me into the studio. I’m interested in beauty, but not perfection. I’m drawn to resilience, vulnerability, faith, longing, and joy—and to the complicated layers that make us who we are.

Every painting begins beneath the surface.

My paintings are built slowly through layers of mixed media and oil. I often begin with vintage hymns, Scripture, printed pages, handwritten marks, inks, acrylic, and other materials before adding layers of oil paint.

Some of those early marks remain visible. Others nearly disappear.

I love that tension between what is revealed and what is hidden. Up close, you may discover a word beneath a flower, a fragment of text, or evidence of an earlier version of the painting.

Like us, the finished work carries a history beneath what you first see.