Art Of The Motorcycle

Motorcycle artists are few and far between--and even fewer are women. But Missouri-based painter Stefanie Aziere-Sattler, 41, has carved out a growing reputation for her distinctive, colorful, Impressionistic oil paintings depicting anything with wheels and a motor.

"I've always had a need for speed," Stefanie declares. "I used to barrel-race horses and drag-race a '72 Oldsmobile Cutlass."

After a serious accident on a horse, however, she turned her focus to painting, beginning with portraits of custom cars. It wasn't until 2006 that she produced her first motorcycle painting, depicting her husband Donnie's bright-red Harley-Davidson Firefighters' Special Edition. Shortly thereafter came her first art show at Yeagers Harley-Davidson in Sedalia, since when she's been painting bikes full-time.

And she's developed a special skill for capturing chrome. "Chrome is reflective of everything around it--it's not actually one color," Stefanie says. "It's a picture within a picture, so sometimes it'll take on the color of the sky, other times the ground.

"There are certain aspects of a car or bike that make it what it is," she adds; for example, the headlamp and chromed front spring of a girder-forked Harley. "My mission is to reveal a perspective that evokes emotion. It's not the object itself so much as the feeling you get when you view it."

In 2008, Stefanie was named the official artist for S&S;'s 50th anniversary celebration, and was commissioned to produce four paintings commemorating the company's history. See those, and more of her work, at www.chromedimpressions.com.