S. Manya Stoumen-Tolino is best known for her highly gestural paintings, which delve into the essence of the medium while expressing her deep reverence for organic life and its perpetual ability to renew. Infusing her materials with vibrant energies, she employs layered marks, veils, and emotive colors to evoke unfolding narratives. Executed with a painterly hand, her works inhabit a realm between representational and non-representational abstraction, rooted in both the physical act of painting and the intense observation of the life forms around her.

 

Viewing her creative process as a form of meditation or contemplation, Stoumen-Tolino believes her works are as much spoken through her as they are from her. Motion and change serve as central themes, serving as poignant metaphors for life’s rich tapestry of experiences and emotions. Blending human, avian, botanical, and zoological forms, her art transcends traditional boundaries between abstraction and representation.

 

In a world increasingly detached from nature, Stoumen-Tolino emphatically highlights the pulse of life within and around us, inviting viewers to immerse themselves in the rhythms and significance of existence.

 

Born just outside of Philadelphia, Stoumen-Tolino pursued undergraduate studies at the University of the Arts (Philadelphia College of Art) and graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania in Painting. Early in her career, she independently worked and studied in Italy, where her love for the figure, light, and transcendent narratives solidified. Her paintings are included in many private collections.  Currently, residing in New Market, MD, her artistic mission is to create art that vividly captures the forces shaping life.  While her style is generally expressionistic, her work transcends specific movements or time periods.

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