Emilie Stark-Menneg
Questing into the Unknown
Studio portrait with Pageant our pigeon. Photo: Alaric Beal
TEN YEARS ON FROM MY FIRST ENCOUNTER with her work, artist Emilie Stark-Menneg continues to draw me into her "cheerfully subversive…restless worlds," as arts writer Christopher B. Crosman has described her visually seductive paintings. Tender and tough, teeming with narrative riffs and masterful paint handling, her color-soaked canvases are joyrides of the imagination. Cinematic in composition, her paintings are populated with scrappy adventurers and romantics, characters caught in states of creation or metamorphosis, poised on the edge between euphoria and despair. At this precarious moment in our collective culture, Stark-Menneg offers a way forward. In her hands, the act of painting is a lifeline, a means of conjuring the past in the present, melding memory, experience, and the prospect of a better, braver future. Here, the artist shares her beginnings with us, her background in theater and performance, how the sacred space of her studio allows her to "take risks and imaginative leaps," and how storytelling is the thread that connects all of her work.
—Suzette McAvoy, Chief Curator and Executive Director Emerita, Center for Maine Contemporary Art
Where did you grow up?
I grew up outside Boston, MA. My parents are both artists and taught in the Art Department at Milton Academy. We lived in faculty housing on the school’s campus. Back then faculty could send their kids to school for free. We had the run of those majestic lawns and historic buildings. We were feral. Nothing was locked.
Growing up, “Being an artist was never a question,” you said when we spoke. What made that true and ideal?
My mom had a studio attached to the house. I loved peering in and seeing these undulating plaster forms humming with life. Making art everyday was as important as sitting down to dinner together every night—it’s just what we did.
Maggie Stark in her studio, 1982. Photo: Carol Keller
Installation of Maggie Stark’s Shadow Light, 2025, Fort Hall Gallery, Brunswick, Maine. Photo: Emilie Stark-Menneg
In fact, both your mom and dad taught art at Milton Academy. Did you attend Milton? What classes did they both teach?
I attended Milton from Kindergarten through 12th grade. My mom taught Architecture, and 3D design, and she was the director of the Nesto Gallery. My dad taught Studio Art, Ceramics, and he coached skiing. I had my dad for a teacher and by the end of the semester the whole class called him, dad.
As an artist, what type of art did your dad do? Your mom?
My parents, Maggie Stark and Paul Menneg are both amazing artists! My mom often works with time and light as her media. Through video and installation, she conjures heartbreaking meditations on the nature of the universe. My dad makes surreal drawings and sculptures that upend our sense of reality and drop us off in these off-kilter and funny paradoxes.
Paul Menneg’s Squeeze, 2022, 7 x 3.5 x 2 inches, Plaster and clay. Photo: Paul Menneg
You received your BFA from Cornell University. What did you study?
I received a BFA in Combined Media in sculpture, architecture, and performance—this mixed-media approach gave me the most flexibility and freedom. I also studied Marxist philosophy, Shakespeare and Avant-garde Theater.
From Cornell, you went to RISD, where you graduated in 2019. What did you study there and where did it take you?
I studied painting at RISD, but I found my home in the Glass Department—they actually wanted to call themselves the Transparency Department, which hints at its supernatural and conceptual framework. I took a class with the artist Jocelyne Prince on the history of optics and projection, which involved both research and work in the hot shop. I absolutely loved the class. It continues to inform my work, as I think about innovation, magic, and technical images. I also did an independent study with the artist Angela Dufresne on mid-century Eastern European feminist cinema. The films we watched and discussed still flow through my imagination.
Tell us about your first muse and how you met.
The artist John Bisbee is my partner and my muse. We met when I was teaching at Milton Academy and he came as a visiting artist. Over a faculty dinner, we concocted a plan for an absurdist performance. The next day, in the middle of a lecture he was giving on his work, I popped out, dressed like Charlie Chaplin and shaved his beard. Hair and hearts were flying!
Installation of John’s Bisbee’s New Blooms, 2014, Shelburne Museum, Shelburne, VT. Photo: Andy Duback
Is John Bisbee still your muse?
Yes! And he is the best model. Many people squirm when they have to pose for long periods of time. Johnny holds these daring shapes with such determination and zeal. I love painting him and I love watching him make his brilliant work. In his hands, steel melts into poetry.
When and why did you move to Maine?
I moved to Maine thirteen years ago when I fell in love with Johnny. We live on the coast with Pageant the pigeon, Waffles the dog, and Moosey the mouse. This fairytale menagerie flows into my work, as a kind of faith, a belief in the fantastical and in the interconnectedness of all beings.
The sanctuary of your studio … What does this allow for you?
In some ways it comes from my background in theater. While an undergraduate at Cornell, I had a wonderful professor, Beth Francis Milles, who was always very intentional about saying that the black box, where we rehearsed, was a safe space. The darkness felt protective. To take risks and imaginative leaps I have to feel secure—so I’ve infused my studio with sacred prayers and rituals.
How did you find your style of smearing, pouring, spraying and pushing?
Endless experimentation. I am just so curious about what will happen if…
Wing Catcher, 2025, 20 x 18 inches, Acrylic on canvas. Photo: And Again Docu
Sea of Galilee, after Rembrandt’s painting, Christ in the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, 2024-25, 70 x 70 inches, Acrylic on canvas.
Photo: And Again Docu
Who are the people depicted in your works? What do they create?
I often paint myself and loved ones. I don’t think of them as portraits, but as performances captured in paint. They are ragtag romantics—making things we’ve never seen before.
Sun Stroke, 2024, 30 x 24 inches, Acrylic and glitter on canvas. Photo: Luc Demers
Strawberry Moon, 2021, 80 x 100 inches, acrylic on canvas. Photo: Luc Demers
Your work has a musical quality. Do you dance or sing?
As an undergraduate, I also studied ballet and modern dance. After graduating from Cornell, my friend Kazoo and I bicycled across the country doing dance performances in laundromats. In my paintings, I am dancing with color and form in strange and wild places—a full-body wiggle across the canvas.
Your new paintings that were recently shown at Dowling Walsh gallery, in Rockland, are quite different from the work in your show, Thread of Her Scent, that was at the Farnsworth Art Museum in 2024. What prompted this new direction?
It doesn’t feel like a new direction to me. Before going to graduate school, when I was living in Boston, I studied Chekhov technique with a great teacher, Scott Fielding. Something he said comes to mind in terms of playing a scene under very specific conditions. For example, we performed Hemingway’s the Hills Like White Elephants, where the only thing we had to imagine was that the temperature was 110 degrees. Everything about the drama unfolded with such intensity and the harrowing subtext of the scene flowed unselfconsciously. Storytelling is my furnace; it connects all of my work.
Installation of Thread of Her Scent, Farnsworth Museum of Art, Rockland, Maine, 2024. Photo: Luc Demers
For Thread of Her Scent, I reimagined the myth of the Maiden and the Unicorn. When I looked back on that suite of paintings, I realized that I wanted to continue pulling forth aspects of the fairy tale. Recalling how in acting class we emphasized the feeling of sweltering heat, for my recent show, I tried to increase the visibility of the story. A narrative arc happens over time—so establishing movement within a still picture became the dominant concern. Suddenly the paintings became very windy, as wind is inherently in motion. By depicting the velocity of air and its impact on the subject, everything else blew away. So it is not a new direction, so much as a highlighting of key concerns.
What are you working on in the studio now?
Right now, I am painting my own myth, in which a medieval French woman is persecuted for her visions, but her captors are unaware that she is sending her pictures into the future.
What’s next for you?
I hope a surprise!