From Medicine to Art, Emelie Stenhammar Finds Meaning in the Unexpected

Thursday, Sep 24, 2026 • Jayce K. Smith : Contact

For UTA Master of Fine Arts student Emelie Stenhammar, pursuing art has meant becoming comfortable with the unexpected.

Originally from Sweden, Stenhammar spent part of her professional life as a medical doctor before making a mid-career transition to pursue her passion for art. Now based in Fort Worth and completing her MFA at The University of Texas at Arlington, she has developed a multidisciplinary practice exploring spirituality, transformation, materiality and transcendence.

This summer, that work reached audiences across North Texas through two solo exhibitions.

From June 5 through July 26, 2026, Stenhammar presented How Unexpected: Encounters with the Divine at the Arlington Museum of Art. Just weeks later, her MFA thesis exhibition, Boggled, opened August 24 at the Cliff Gallery at Dallas College Mountain View.

For Stenhammar, the opportunity to present How Unexpected lived up to its name.

"It was a great experience for me to have a solo show at the Arlington Museum of Art, and just like the title of the show, it was very unexpected," Stenhammar said.

She had only two weeks to prepare a 5,000-square-foot exhibition.

"Many of the paintings in the show I had only seen in my crammed studio, and seeing them in a museum setting made me look at them in a different way," she said. "They actually looked like real art!"

The larger setting also gave Stenhammar an opportunity to experience her work through the eyes of an audience.

"It was also, as it always is, fascinating and humbling to watch other people interact with something I had created," she said.

Between suffering and transcendence

Stenhammar works across painting, sculpture, collage and ceramics, incorporating materials including unstretched canvas, wood panels, acrylic and latex paint, charcoal and found objects.

Her process is intuitive. Rather than beginning with a predetermined image, Stenhammar allows abstract marks and layered materials to gradually develop into figurative forms. The resulting work reflects her interest in discovering something extraordinary within ordinary materials and experiences.

That search is also deeply connected to the two worlds that have shaped her life: medicine and faith.

"Living in this world, and especially as a medical doctor, I have seen a lot of suffering," Stenhammar said. "But I also live in a world where faith is real and divine encounters are not unusual. My art often grows out of the tension between these two realities, the world as it is and the world as it should and can be."

For Stenhammar, art provides a language for experiences that can be difficult to communicate otherwise.

"I often lack the words to explain my spiritual encounters to someone who has not experienced them," she said. "Perhaps that is part of why I paint."

Her hope is not necessarily to provide viewers with answers, but to create space for curiosity and contemplation.

"I wish my art could somehow carry a glimpse of what I see, or a fragrance of the world I live in," Stenhammar said. "And I hope that, in encountering my work, the viewer might leave with a longing, a sense that there is something more, something just beyond what we can see."

A summer of artistic milestones

How Unexpected was curated by Benjamin Terry, Associate Professor in UTA's Department of Art and Art History, connecting Stenhammar's graduate work at UTA with the broader Arlington arts community.

Now, Boggled marks another milestone as Stenhammar approaches the completion of her MFA. The thesis exhibition opened August 24 at the Cliff Gallery at Dallas College Mountain View and remains on view through October 9, 2026. A public reception is scheduled for September 30 from noon to 2 p.m., offering North Texas audiences another opportunity to experience Stenhammar's work as she continues developing the ideas and artistic practice that have defined her graduate studies.

For an artist whose journey has moved from medicine to art and whose work continually searches for meaning within the unexpected, the exhibitions represent more than professional milestones. They offer Stenhammar another opportunity to invite others into the questions that have shaped both her life and her work.