The Drama of Black and White

When Stephanie Campos was in kindergarten, her teacher gave the class a drawing assignment. She finished her drawing and gave it to the teacher, who then asked her to draw it again. “I think she wanted to know that it wasn’t ‘accidentally’ good,” she says. “Then she called my parents and said, ‘Your daughter is an artist.’”

She is indeed. Today Campos is known for her realistic charcoal portraits of Native Americans. Her work has caught the attention of collectors—and other artists. In fact, when asked about the highlight of her career, she quickly responds with two words: Howard Terpning. Terpning, an award-winning painter and member of the prestigious Cowboy Artists of America, purchased one of Campos’ pieces at an art show. She was thrilled to have an artist of his caliber buy one of her works.

Campos created her first realistic portrait when she was just 13. That same year, an issue of Arizona Highways Magazine published an article about R. Brownell McGrew, who was known and admired for his portraits of Native Americans. In fact, his Navajo friends called him “the man who paints the old.”

Campos was so inspired by McGrew’s work that she got out the oil paints her father had bought for her and tried her hand at copying his paintings. Her mother, taking notice of what she was painting, shared something Stephanie didn’t know: Her ancestors, on her mother’s side, were Cherokee. They were successful farmers in Georgia in the 1830s and, when they heard that Cherokees were being rounded up and forced to relocate during an ethnic cleansing of approximately 60,000 Native Americans, Campos’ ancestors quickly left and moved to Oklahoma. “That reinforced my interest in painting historical Native Americans and to honor a people who just tried to live freely,” she says.

Read the full article in the September/October 2026 issue.