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The 15-Year-Old Painter Making Fan Art into Fine Art

Young artist Cheyenne Stetson has developed a strong artistic voice in her prodigious paintings.

15 is a tough age for anybody, between the academic and social pressures of high school, uncontrollable hormonal changes, and the inevitable confusion of discovering yourself as your teenage years hit full stride. Between the regular challenges faced during this age, Cheyenne Stetson has somehow found time to foster an impressive artistic talent.

Shifting between painting and illustration, Stetson portrays iconic figures from our current cultural moment, with a clear predilection for comic book superheroes and sci-fi characters, as well as the actors who've portrayed them in recent blockbusters. Adam Driver's Kylo Ren is rendered as a disembodied head floating in a pile of blood, with Driver's distinct facial features as distinct as ever. Tom Holland's Spider-Man gets immortalized in a thematically stylized blue-and-red portrait, encroached upon by the superhero's iconic web approaching from the side.

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These works resonate like fan art taken to Pop art levels, hard-worked tributes from a heavily entrenched devotee. This sentiment is echoed by the young artist's own words: "Movies take me to a different world, and it makes me feel part of these worlds when I paint for them, Stetson tells Creators. "I also just love the human face and how different each one is. In each person I paint, there are little quirks that make it new and fun for me."

Despite her age, Stetson has, of course, been honing her abilities for years: "I've been drawing since I was really little, but I really started taking it seriously once I had actual art teachers around the 3rd grade. Since then, I've just kept practicing and doing portraits," the artist explains.

Already displaying a distinct artistic voice somewhere between figurative portraiture and post-impressionism, it's a wonder that Stetson's isn't even halfway through high school. She explains, "Now I'm here, and all I hope is to further expand my artistic reach. For the future, I just hope to find something that will let me be creative and continue doing what I love. Perhaps I'll even make my own comic series, who knows?"

Check out Cheyenne Stetson's diverse array of portraiture on her Instagram page.

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