Stephanie S Ribeiro

I am an artist and writer. I work in watercolor, gouache, acrylic, and oil — flowers, sky, and the quiet places where light settles — and I am building a body of work about how a single flower, a passing cloud, a landscape at dusk can hold everything.

My paintings are worlds you can live inside. Each one holds a feeling that refuses to be named quickly — the light that stays a moment too long, the bloom that opens only after dark. I paint the space between the visible and invisible: the world outside my eyes and the one inside my heart.

I also write the stories of the paintings. Each work carries its own world — a title, a feeling, a quiet mythology. The writing is not explanation; it is an extension of the canvas. Words deepen what the brushstroke begins, and together they become the full invitation: step inside, rest here, feel what you could not yet say.

I create in layers — acrylic, high texture, oils, glaze on glaze, meaning folded into form. Painted layer by layer, written with presence. Beauty is a spiritual language I have been learning all my life.

“I paint from where the soul meets the visible world.”

I am Brazilian-American, and I have made my home in Saint Augustine, Florida — a city of old light and salt air — with my partner and our daughter, whom we homeschool. Our life is blessed, intentional, and full.

I have never separated that from the work. The studio and the schoolroom open onto each other. Slowing down, paying attention, finding beauty in what is already here: these are the practices I teach our daughter, and the same ones that move through every painting I make.

I hold an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College and a BFA in Art Education from the Academy of Art University, and I have completed the Mastery Program at the Milan Art Institute. I believe that education, like art, is a path toward freedom — and that both require the same quality of presence.

My work is rooted in contemplation and in gratitude — for the light that comes through a window in the afternoon, for flowers that insist on blooming, for the grace of being alive in a world that is still, despite everything, extraordinarily beautiful.