Stacy studied illustration and traditional animation at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, earning a BA in 2000. After graduation, she interned with a small animation company long enough to realize that illustration was not her calling, although a fascination with capturing movement was. This she would explore through line and paint as a fine artist. Having grown up in the cosmopolitan city of Washington, D. C., Stacy Kamin has lived a life any aspiring artist would envy. Providence brought her into the world with a mother who nurtured Stacy’s interest in drawing and painting every step of the way. Noted artist and teacher, Jacqueline Kamin, indulged her child’s art supply caprices and enrolled her in children’s classes at the National Gallery at a very young age. Art was alive in this bright artistic spirit, and as Stacy herself says, “Creating images from pencils and paint was like magic to me. I knew early on that I had to be an artist.” She joined her family in Los Angeles and there found a well-respected Chinese artist, Shuqiao Zhou, to mentor her privately for six years. Zhou’s teachers came from the great Russian lineage of Ilya Repin and Valentin Serov, and through this expressive tradition, imparted a love of paint that is still a hallmark of Stacy’s work. Drawn to the dramatic effects of Rembrandt, Stacy sought out the instruction of two well-known masters of this knowledge—David A Leffel and Sherrie McGraw. She credits their influence for the startling light that she is able to achieve in her own work. “They introduced me to Abstract Realism, a way of painting so rich that I can’t imagine my education ever ending—I will be a student of this great tradition for my entire life.”
