Christa Stephens (she/her) is an autistic artist who uses simple geometric shapes to describe complex life experiences. Her intricate, hard-edge abstractions focus on the fundamentals of color, form and line, and explore the possibilities inherent in their variation and repetition. Working from this economy of content, Christa combines drafting, painting, and mixed-media techniques to investigate different kinds of parameters and their effects on human perception. Christa’s artwork draws upon her life in music, the synchronicity of the natural world, and the early pioneers of abstraction, but finds its individual character in the autistic qualities that permeate her lived experience. She perceives the world through patterns and visual metaphors, and categorizes details in order to navigate and interpret her surroundings. These attributes also guide her artistic process, resulting in a distinctively precise, elaborate approach to contemporary abstraction.
Christa lives in Santa Fe, NM, where she maintains a multifaceted creative practice and advocates
strength-based narratives for herself and others on the autism spectrum. Her work has been
exhibited in museums, galleries, and contemporary art centers throughout the southwestern United
States.