I Let The Devil In

by Steph Lasater

Steph Lasater is a multimedia artist focusing on painting, drawing, and photography. She focuses her practice around mental health and the difficulties surrounding the human condition, including mood and personality disorders, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Lasater primarily uses her own portrait at the forefront of her work, acting as an insight into her mind. She focuses on the realistic while melding painterly strokes and using color as a vessel for emotion to create a dream like effect that combines idealism with destruction. Drawing from lived experience, Lasater uses her own struggles with suicidal ideation in her practice. Her work seeks to call out lackluster resources and the stigmatization of those facing mental illness, trauma, and addiction. Her work shines a light on the uncomfortable and everyday lives of the chronically mentally ill while using aesthetic imagery to mock the romanticism of trauma, depression, and darkness and extend a conversation about the things that often go unsaid.