Stephanie Elaine Pogue was a printmaker, educator, and curator whose work brought together an adventurous use of color, richly patterned surfaces, and a sustained interest in nature and the human figure. Moving between representation and abstraction, she developed a personal visual language in which floral forms, architectural shapes, and images of women became vehicles for exploring beauty, identity, and spirituality. Her work reflects both the possibilities of printmaking and the artistic community in which she studied and taught.

Born in Shelby, North Carolina, Pogue initially attended Syracuse University before transferring to Howard University. There, she studied with James A. Porter, Loïs Mailou Jones, James Lesesne Wells, Lila O. Asher, and David C. Driskell, who became an important mentor. She graduated in 1966 with a BFA in painting and received Howard’s Outstanding Graduate Award. In 1968, she earned her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan and joined the art faculty at Fisk University in Nashville. At Fisk, she reunited with Driskell and worked within a distinguished community of artists, eventually becoming chair of the art department and director of its gallery.

Pogue’s achievement rested particularly on her experimentation with color etching. She mastered color viscosity printing, producing vivid images with layered, textured surfaces. Her compositions often balance simplified shapes with intricate ornament, allowing color and pattern to carry meaning alongside recognizable subjects. Curator Adrienne L. Childs has situated her work in relation to the Pattern and Decoration and feminist art movements, while emphasizing its individual character.

The two works presented here demonstrate the breadth of this approach. In Field of Flowers (1976), a color etching and aquatint, golden floral forms mingle with dark, irregular shapes across a densely textured surface. The composition moves between a suggestion of a flowering landscape and an almost entirely abstract arrangement of color and mark. Waiting for the Bus, an etching dated to the 1970s, turns instead to everyday human activity. Its loosely articulated figures, umbrellas, and contrasting silhouettes transform an ordinary gathering into a rhythmic procession. Together, these works reveal Pogue’s ability to find expressive possibilities in both natural forms and familiar social encounters.

In 1981, Pogue joined the University of Maryland, College Park, where she taught printmaking and drawing and chaired the art department from 1993 to 1998. Fulbright-Hays fellowships supported study in India in 1981 and Pakistan in 1986, extending her engagement with architecture, ornament, and traditional crafts.

Following her death in 2002, the David C. Driskell Center organized Arabesque: The Art of Stephanie E. Pogue (2008), a retrospective featuring forty prints. Her work is represented in collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Driskell Center. More recently, her contribution to Fisk’s artistic community was acknowledged in Kindred Spirits: Intergenerational Forms of Expression, 1966–1999, organized by Fisk University Galleries and the Frist Art Museum in 2025.

Ref: https://www.kolumnmagazine.com/2026/05/09/stephanie-pogues-quiet-revolution-in-color/