Biographical sketch - Angela Kathleen Stout
“It was pain that led Angela Kathleen Stout to the artistic path, it was pleasure that kept her there, and it is passion that calls her forward into her destiny as an artist."
Beth Ostrov - Segmation Magazine
How is it, a middle daughter of 5 children born to rebellious Pentecostal preachers became an internationally present artist? Angela Kathleen (later to marry John Stout in 2011) was born into the Silva family in Gooding, Idaho while they stayed for a few months on the homestead that her great-grandfather had established in the 19th century. Her parents were traveling ministers that pushed the limits of their religion and took their message of love and universal salvation all over Idaho and the Northwest. Into this nomadic existence, Angela was born on June 6, 1966, the only child born in the small county hospital on this auspicious date. The numerological irony was not lost on her rather religious parents. It was only after leaving the church for theological reasons that they settled down near her maternal family in the East Bay of San Francisco. There she experienced the cultural diversity of metropolitan life and spent many days wandering around The City exploring. Yet in juxtaposition, visiting her aunt Jean, who raised horses, and with whom they spent many vacations in Idaho, showed her the value of small-town-ranch life as well. Both of her parents were musical, intellectual, and artistic. Her mother, an amateur anthropologist and local politician, was a seamstress and a landscape artist that followed the teaching of William Alexander who developed a new method of painting (later to be taught by Bob Ross). Her father was a traditional oil painter, metal sculptor, and though not a preacher anymore, studied philosophy, languages, physics, and astronomy.
Art and music were always encouraged, but the mental health of Angela’s parents was at the very least shaky and her childhood was fraught with uncertainty and violence. It was this pain, and that of an unfortunate abusive marriage at the young age of 17, that later motivated her to create. But it was these deeply disturbing emotions around her childhood and her marriage and her subsequent divorce that pushed her to drug abuse and the eventual drug-induced-Bipolar psychosis at the age of 24 which put her in a mental ward for 2 months. This chain of events set her on a path back to Idaho, into addiction recovery, and into therapy which changed the direction of her life.
At 18 Angela had started working in her aunt Charlotte’s preschool that shaped her career for many decades. She thrived as a teacher and mentor and it was to this that Angela attributed her unique creativity, “You retain a sense of childish enthusiasm when you hang around young kids. It allowed me to stick my hands in the paint and get messy.”
It was in the care of a PTSD counselor at the start of the new millennium, and what turned out to be a new era for Angela, that she discovered the emotional release of painting. The counselor said matter-of-factly, “You have too much time on your hands, you need to get a hobby.” Her brother, an art major at the time, lent her paint and encouraged her to give it a try. When she showed him her first creation, in amazement he said, “We know what you should be doing!” After that, Angela embarked on a continuous exploration of paint that bordered on mania, producing hundreds of small, Impressionistic paintings in a few short years.
In 2002, that sense of childish enthusiasm freed her creativity and sent Angela in a new and unusual artistic direction. While visiting the Boise Art Museum, she came across a non-representational abstract painting by midcentury artist Kenneth Callahan. He had created the piece using plaster and gesso giving the piece a texture that captivated her. Being tactile, she reached out to touch the ridges of texture. “I just couldn’t help myself,” She facetiously tells the story afterward, “to the dismay of the docent who firmly told me, ‘Do not touch the art!’” Angela left the museum before being asked to leave but the effect of the painting and its texture stayed with her. Once back in her studio, she didn’t have plaster but was in the middle of a floor to ceiling curtain project. She looked at the fabric, then at the canvas and thought, I wonder what would happen if…” Taking the cloth down, she glued it to a board. This was the beginning of years of developing this idea of sculpting the canvas and then painting it. It was a messy process but being free to do hands on art projects with her many classes of preschool children she thoroughly enjoyed it. She relished handling the glue-soaked fabric and forming it with her hands into organic lines and shapes. Over the years the sculpting process stayed the same, but the application of paint to the cloth evolved.
At first, she let the fabric and its pattern or texture speak, then went on to add various kinds of paint, settling on an oil-based enamel to preserve the cloth and unify the color of the fabric, and subsequently added color to the treated surface with oil paint. The subjects that Angela painted varied. At times she created landscapes, figures, and still life, but she always returned to the non-objective work that focused on line, shape, color, and form. “There’s just something about creating from the gut rather than from the brain. In a landscape, I am telling you, ‘This is a tree.’ But in non-representational paintings, you see what comes out of your subconscious, like an ink blot. In this way, the viewer completes the work.” It was in this creative place that Angela found inspiration. It was years later that she realized that what she had was Synesthesia, that when she heard music or other sounds like someone speaking, she saw colors, shapes, and forms, that colors had texture, etc. When she woke up, she heard music in her mind that sparked colors and forms, and if the images stayed with her, she would go paint them.
In 2012, Angela had dozens of cloth sculpted paintings piling up in her house when her best friend and fellow artist, Robin D. Cox, a Western realist and ball point pen artist (westernreflectionz.com), called her and asked if they could get a booth to sell artwork at a local Boise art festival. Though nervous, Angela agreed. During the event, she sold her first two paintings to actual art collectors. This sparked a push to market her work.
In getting her degree in Liberal arts at College of Western Idaho at the age of 43, she found a great love for Art history, especially the Impressionist period that inspired her so much when she started painting. When they offered a Studio Art degree at CWI, she jumped at a chance to get her Associates of Arts that took her from self-taught artist to a professional art career. This confidence only multiplied when she became president of the Treasure Valley Artists’ Alliance, was inducted as a member of the exclusive professional organization, Boise Open Studios (BOSCO) juried by artist and professor, Richard Young, and went on to Boise State University to seek her Bachelor of Fine Art.
By 2015, she had sold work to many private collectors on four different continents but when she was honored with a spot in a group show at Art Basel Miami with her work, aftermath, created in support of the Nepal earthquake relief, her career shot up from local artist to one of emerging national status. It was during the 2020 pandemic, while continuing to develop her distinctive style at her art studio in Idaho, that Angela was approached by the curator of the Context Art Gallery in Treviso, Italy who offered her gallery representation, through which she gained an international presence.
“Paint was the life preserver that was thrown to me when the box marked “reject” was taking on water. I refused to accept that the only options were to sink or swim, so I took matters into my own hands and painted a boat.”
Art and music were always encouraged, but the mental health of Angela’s parents was at the very least shaky and her childhood was fraught with uncertainty and violence. It was this pain, and that of an unfortunate abusive marriage at the young age of 17, that later motivated her to create. But it was these deeply disturbing emotions around her childhood and her marriage and her subsequent divorce that pushed her to drug abuse and the eventual drug-induced-Bipolar psychosis at the age of 24 which put her in a mental ward for 2 months. This chain of events set her on a path back to Idaho, into addiction recovery, and into therapy which changed the direction of her life.
At 18 Angela had started working in her aunt Charlotte’s preschool that shaped her career for many decades. She thrived as a teacher and mentor and it was to this that Angela attributed her unique creativity, “You retain a sense of childish enthusiasm when you hang around young kids. It allowed me to stick my hands in the paint and get messy.”
It was in the care of a PTSD counselor at the start of the new millennium, and what turned out to be a new era for Angela, that she discovered the emotional release of painting. The counselor said matter-of-factly, “You have too much time on your hands, you need to get a hobby.” Her brother, an art major at the time, lent her paint and encouraged her to give it a try. When she showed him her first creation, in amazement he said, “We know what you should be doing!” After that, Angela embarked on a continuous exploration of paint that bordered on mania, producing hundreds of small, Impressionistic paintings in a few short years.
In 2002, that sense of childish enthusiasm freed her creativity and sent Angela in a new and unusual artistic direction. While visiting the Boise Art Museum, she came across a non-representational abstract painting by midcentury artist Kenneth Callahan. He had created the piece using plaster and gesso giving the piece a texture that captivated her. Being tactile, she reached out to touch the ridges of texture. “I just couldn’t help myself,” She facetiously tells the story afterward, “to the dismay of the docent who firmly told me, ‘Do not touch the art!’” Angela left the museum before being asked to leave but the effect of the painting and its texture stayed with her. Once back in her studio, she didn’t have plaster but was in the middle of a floor to ceiling curtain project. She looked at the fabric, then at the canvas and thought, I wonder what would happen if…” Taking the cloth down, she glued it to a board. This was the beginning of years of developing this idea of sculpting the canvas and then painting it. It was a messy process but being free to do hands on art projects with her many classes of preschool children she thoroughly enjoyed it. She relished handling the glue-soaked fabric and forming it with her hands into organic lines and shapes. Over the years the sculpting process stayed the same, but the application of paint to the cloth evolved.
At first, she let the fabric and its pattern or texture speak, then went on to add various kinds of paint, settling on an oil-based enamel to preserve the cloth and unify the color of the fabric, and subsequently added color to the treated surface with oil paint. The subjects that Angela painted varied. At times she created landscapes, figures, and still life, but she always returned to the non-objective work that focused on line, shape, color, and form. “There’s just something about creating from the gut rather than from the brain. In a landscape, I am telling you, ‘This is a tree.’ But in non-representational paintings, you see what comes out of your subconscious, like an ink blot. In this way, the viewer completes the work.” It was in this creative place that Angela found inspiration. It was years later that she realized that what she had was Synesthesia, that when she heard music or other sounds like someone speaking, she saw colors, shapes, and forms, that colors had texture, etc. When she woke up, she heard music in her mind that sparked colors and forms, and if the images stayed with her, she would go paint them.
In 2012, Angela had dozens of cloth sculpted paintings piling up in her house when her best friend and fellow artist, Robin D. Cox, a Western realist and ball point pen artist (westernreflectionz.com), called her and asked if they could get a booth to sell artwork at a local Boise art festival. Though nervous, Angela agreed. During the event, she sold her first two paintings to actual art collectors. This sparked a push to market her work.
In getting her degree in Liberal arts at College of Western Idaho at the age of 43, she found a great love for Art history, especially the Impressionist period that inspired her so much when she started painting. When they offered a Studio Art degree at CWI, she jumped at a chance to get her Associates of Arts that took her from self-taught artist to a professional art career. This confidence only multiplied when she became president of the Treasure Valley Artists’ Alliance, was inducted as a member of the exclusive professional organization, Boise Open Studios (BOSCO) juried by artist and professor, Richard Young, and went on to Boise State University to seek her Bachelor of Fine Art.
By 2015, she had sold work to many private collectors on four different continents but when she was honored with a spot in a group show at Art Basel Miami with her work, aftermath, created in support of the Nepal earthquake relief, her career shot up from local artist to one of emerging national status. It was during the 2020 pandemic, while continuing to develop her distinctive style at her art studio in Idaho, that Angela was approached by the curator of the Context Art Gallery in Treviso, Italy who offered her gallery representation, through which she gained an international presence.
“Paint was the life preserver that was thrown to me when the box marked “reject” was taking on water. I refused to accept that the only options were to sink or swim, so I took matters into my own hands and painted a boat.”
Angela Kathleen Stout
Published for J. Pepin Gallery
Published for J. Pepin Gallery
