Meghann Stephenson

The Trojan horse trope in art seems to be a device utilized by all of my favorite painters. While I’ll never say no to a Hieronymus Bosch painting or resist letting the eerie flesh of a Mire Lee work crawl inside my own skin, my heart, lately, desires all of the pretty things. Discovering Meghann Stephenson’s work has been my recent delight. Stephenson’s first solo show opened only in 2024 at Half Gallery in Los Angeles. Entitled Swan Dive, it was quite the plunge—graceful on entry, devastating once submerged.

When we reference the Trojan horse trope, we often forget the story of Cassandra. In Greek mythology, Cassandra was a seer blessed with prophecy but cursed to have her truths dismissed. She was the lone figure who tried to warn the Trojans that their gleaming gift was, in fact, a beautifully crafted doom. I sometimes wonder if Cassandra’s “curse” wasn’t a curse at all, but simply the fate of all seeing women. Looking at Stephenson’s gorgeous paintings and iconography, she obviously wonders the same. The moments before the ivory plates slip under their own weight, the champagne glasses teetering on the white-linened edge, the tulip petals plucked from their tender corolla—you can’t help but suspect that these scenes aren’t about fate by gravity, incident, or malice, but the forlorn destiny of anyone who has the fortitude to look upon “truth” under fluorescent light.

Throughout her work, Stephenson, in Cassandra’s starring role, seems to adopt an agency that feels more… star-aligned than bewitched. And what if we are allowed to revel in that?