Stephanie Jeanne Marie: From Scroll Culture to Slow Looking
In a time defined by speed, endless feeds and content churn, French-born artist Stephanie Jeanne Marie moves to a different rhythm. Her medium? Slowness.
Stephanie Jeanne Marie is a French visual artist whose work privileges pigment, thread, ink, as well as loose canvases and paper. Her practice follows a rhythm shaped by purposeful slowness, recalling an embodied attention. Working with raw pigment, charcoal, thread, and loose canvas, her process is tactile, elemental, and intentionally unhurried.
CROWN - Chakra series. Stephanie Jeanne Marie.
Stephanie’s work stands in stark contrast to the hyper-speed of current visual culture. According to a Dscout study, the average person taps or swipes on their phone over 2,600 times per day. PPC Samurai research shows users spend under 2.5 seconds looking at social media content. That automatic scroll-through mindset has crept into how we engage with art. Even in galleries, viewers move from piece to piece, seeking stimulation instead of connection. Stephanie’s work resists that. It rewards a different kind of presence.
“I’m not anti-technology,” she says. “But I think we’ve forgotten how to see with depth. My work leads to reawaken that.”
Stitched details on paper from SYLLABUS 1 by Stephanie Jeanne Marie.
She is part of a growing international shift toward slow art — a movement now being embraced by institutions such as the National Gallery (London), The Met, and Tate Modern, all of which now feature “slow looking” programs. Her work belongs to this quiet revolution: anti-algorithmic, materially rich, rooted in time and emotional resonance.
Out of walls - SACRAL - Chakra series. Stephanie Jeanne Marie. Photo Credit: Annyck Bent
Raised in Paris, she spent much of her childhood in the company of two eccentric collector-aunts, surrounded by antiquities, textiles, and precious objects; often exploring museums, churches, and historic estates. Worn tapestries, vaulted ceilings, aged patinas shaped her sensitivity to objects and structures that carry time within them. Later, her practice deepened through extended stays in the Himalayas and Southeast Asia, where ancient cultures, traditions, and elemental landscapes strengthened her relationship to time and nature.
ROOT - Chakra series. Stephanie Jeanne Marie.
She often paints outdoors in makeshift studios beneath trees, along cliffs or rivers. Stephanie's most recent completed work, The Chakra Series, embodies her tactile process. It explores our relationship with the energy centres of the body through pigment, texture, slow stitching and colour resonance. These are not paintings that demand attention — they earn it, over time. Look once, and you’ll miss the threadwork. Look twice, and the light catches a faint mineral scar. Look longer, and something shifts. The use of raw materials and slow techniques, like hand-stitching, reflects her connection to centuries-old craft. It also nods to the influence of her aunts, who collected textiles and objects marked by time — a practice mirrored in Stephanie’s own approach. In an art world often driven by spectacle and speed, Stephanie offers something else: presence.
Her work has been acquired by private collectors across Europe and the U.S., and she currently splits her time between Europe and Southeast Asia.
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Further Information:
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Image Credits:
Lead: SOLAR (Detail), Stephanie Jeanne Marie - Chakra series.
All other images courtesy of the artist and as credited in photo captions.