Stefanie Diez Huguet remembers the paint set she received
for her twelfth birthday as the beginning of considering herself an artist.
After using up the acrylic paints in the set, she turned to other media to create
her images. She hasn’t stopped since then.
“Art isn’t a part of me; it is me,” she says.
Huguet grew up in the south Louisiana town of Dutchtown in
Ascension Parish. Following her marriage, she moved with her husband’s job. She
lived in Kansas City, MO and Moultrie, GA. Now she’s back in her native
Louisiana, residing in Opelousas.
Through Colquitt County Arts Center in Moultrie, she learned oil painting and realized art was
still her dream. As the oldest of her four children entered
college, she realized her time had come and enrolled. She earned a BA from
Valdosta State in 2006, completing the degree she began right out of high
school but left unfinished to marry. After graduation, she created a studio in
her home. For about five years, she worked as a graphic designer and put in
about a year as the coordinator of a children’s museum.
When the economy crashed and outside jobs became scarce,
Huguet began to focus on her own art from her home studio. Her work includes
landscape oils en plein air, live
painting, live sketches, and watercolor portraits of children, as well as oil
portraits.
To her skills in watercolor and oils, Huguet added
encaustic. The ancient art form employs colored wax to create an image and
results in a more textured image that traditional paints. “It’s just so much
fun,” she says of the medium, while acknowledging the high cost of getting
started. She spent several years purchasing the materials before she began
producing works.
Her website includes a
blog of her journey and a link to her online gallery. One of the
brick-and-mortar galleries hanging her works is Artists’ Galleries de Juneau in Olde
Towne Slidell, LA where Huguet is honored as the Artist of the Month for
December 2016.
Contact Huguet by email with commission inquiries.
© 2016 Mary Beth
Magee