Stella Ehrich is a figurative painter specializing in portraits, landscapes and still life paintings in oil, pastel and charcoal.  She has exhibited her work in galleries across the United States, England and Italy.  Born in New Orleans and raised in Clarksdale, Mississippi, she earned a B.F.A. in painting from the Memphis Academy of Art and an M.F.A. in painting from Bennington College.  Stella has taught as an adjunct professor at Williams College, the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts, Bennington College and the Community College of Vermont.  She and her husband, Fred X Brownstein, teach summer workshops for painters and marble sculptors in Tuscany as well as in the United States.  

The most profound influence on Ehrich’s work came from the sixteen years that she lived and painted in Italy.  During that time she studied for seven years in Florence in the studio of Signorina Nerina Simi, whose instruction was based on the studio practices of Jean-Léon Gérôme, a French academic painter and teacher of the mid-nineteenth century.   The Signorina's father, Filadelfo Simi, studied with Gérôme in Paris and was a well known Italian painter of the late 19th century. His daughter Nerina, my teacher, studied with her father and carried this French academic tradition from Gérôme into the 20th century, teaching in her Florence studio until her death at the age of 97.