Today we’d like to introduce you to Katayoun Stewart.
Hi Katayoun, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I’ve always been drawn to faces, not to create decorative art, but as something to understand. I started painting portraits as a way of looking closer at emotion, tension, and the parts of a person that aren’t immediately visible. Over time, that turned into a more personal language where a single face can hold multiple states at once.
My work often combines realism with subtle distortion, repeating or shifting features to reflect how we experience ourselves internally rather than how we appear externally. It’s less about likeness and more about presence, about holding conflicting feelings in one image without resolving them.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Not at all. It’s been a very uneven path.
One of the biggest struggles has been staying committed to my own direction while continuing to grow and change as a person.
I don’t work in one fixed style, so every few years it feels like starting over, building a new body of work, a new voice, and sometimes a new audience. That lack of stability can be difficult, especially in an art world that often rewards consistency.
There’s also the internal side, learning to trust what I see and feel instead of trying to make work that is simply “liked.” Doubt, frustration, and periods of dissatisfaction are part of the process, especially when I’m pushing something that doesn’t fully exist yet.
On a practical level, finding the right opportunities, galleries, and people who understand more psychological, non-decorative portrait work has also been a challenge. But all of these struggles have shaped the work and made it more honest.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m a painter focused on portraiture, working primarily in oil. My work centers on the psychological presence of a face rather than a traditional likeness. I’m interested in how a single person can hold multiple states at once, so I often shift or repeat features like eyes or lips within one head to reflect that inner complexity while keeping the surface realistic.
I specialize in figurative and portrait painting that sits between clarity and distortion. The image feels real, but something is slightly unsettled. That tension is where the work lives.
What I’m most proud of is staying honest to that direction, even when it’s not the easiest path. The work isn’t decorative and it doesn’t try to resolve itself for the viewer. It asks for a slower kind of looking, and I’ve continued to build on that without simplifying it.
What sets my work apart is that balance between realism and psychological disruption. The faces aren’t fragmented for effect, they remain whole, but they carry layered emotions and contradictions within them. They aim to be visually striking while creating something that feels present and hard to ignore.
What were you like growing up?
I was quiet, but not disconnected. I wasn’t drawn to being the center of attention, but I was always observing.
One of the things I used to do as a child was sit by the window and watch people pass by, imagining what their day had been like, what they were dealing with, even small things like what they might have had for lunch. It was a kind of quiet game, I was creating stories for myself and trying to read something beyond what was visible.
I spent a lot of time alone, drawing and thinking, not as a hobby but as a way to make sense of things. Drawing people interested me early on, not just how they looked, but what their story was and what was happening in their world.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.katayounstewart.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katayounstewart
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katayounstewart
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katayoun-stewart-44296b26/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/katayounstewart
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@katayounstewart2334
- Other: https://www.artsy.net/artist/katayoun-stewart
