The Red & White

“The Very Hungry Caterpillar”, a childhood encounter with watercolor, was how Reese Starling ’26 embarked on her artistic journey. If you have stopped to appreciate the artwork displayed in the Art Center, or flipped through pages of The Dragon, you will find Starling’s unique presence there. Her earliest memory of art is of a hot summer morning, when she slipped away from nap time and pulled out a set of watercolors to paint her favorite stuffed animal. The painting still hangs in her home, a reminder of the immense joy she felt putting color to paper. 

“I’ve always tried to put joy on the paper,” as Starling recalled, “And I was always known as the class artist or the family artist.”

Over the years, her relationship with art has deepened beyond doodling and matured in both techniques and emotional expressions. Stepping into high school, as Starling recounted, was a period of significant artistic challenge yet also great inspiration. Being enrolled in systematic art classes as a freshman altered the way Starling viewed art and her identity as an artist. “Art used to be very recreational for me, but the classes were very skill-based,” as Starling remembered. Accessing resources and curricula that honed in on fostering both techniques and creativity, she also created one of her proudest works during freshman year. Starling completed an expressive self-portrait with graphite pencil, through which she explored introspection of emotions and an inner juxtaposition. The portrait captures Starling’s push-and-pull of emotions during a stage of transition both in life and in art. From then on, a deeper and more complex relationship with art was established. As Starling said, “I realized what messages I want my art to bring to the audience, rather than just drawing something pretty.” While continuing to navigate the visual appeal and intricacy of her art, Starling began to develop a more complete art persona, through which she is not only representing herself but also speaking to the audience.

Arriving at St. George’s, Starling continued on her artistic journey. In Mike Hansel’s 2D Drawing class, she created a series of drawings that explore her connection to her identity as a female. “I was raised in a household of women, and even my pets are female,” she laughed. Femininity and female experience, both personal and collective, became an important anchor in her work. In her concentration, she created a painting that depicts “a torso with flowers on the outside of it, with hands plucking away the flower petals.” Developed from an idea that she had carried for a long time, the work became her way to respond to current events surrounding women’s bodily rights and autonomy. “The hands plucking the petals represent the person not having control over what’s done to their body,” Starling explained.

But this evolution did not come without difficulty. Moving from recreational painting to concentration-based work proved to be a challenge. “I would stress about wanting the message to be captured precisely and perfectly,” Starling admitted, “I would draw thumbnail after thumbnail, but struggle to get it on paper. But eventually, I realized it was more about getting the ideas out rather than being perfect.” The ability to empathize and provoke reflection is essential to Starling’s creative process, as she strives to grow both as an artist and a storyteller through art.”

“A piece of art either needs to be created with strong emotions, or to create a strong emotion,” as Starling shared. 

To Starling, true art is not equated with sophisticated techniques, but its ability to capture the human soul and provoke the desire to create. That is why she finds herself continually inspired by artists and movements that foreground emotion and connection. The Impressionist movement, with its dream-like colors and shapes, is one of her favorite styles. She often longs to create with that same free-flowing quality, but also reveres the power of such of style of art. Among her favorite artists is Vincent Van Gogh, whose use of color she described as “pleasing to the eye but also powerful.” Starling also became greatly interested in the art group Guerrilla Girls, an activist art collective that challenges the art world’s inequities. Many of their posters that are humorous and provocative resonate with her both as an artist and a young woman seeking to capture authentic experience in her own work. 

For Starling, art is not a practice but a language. It is a way to translate joy, frustration, and memory into what people can see and empathize with. Next time you encounter a display of Starling’s work, whether in the wind tunnel or the Hunter Gallery, pause for a moment. You will find more than color and technique— you will find a story, an emotion, and a glimpse into an artist’s soul.