Before curator Shane McAdams entered the picture, The Pfister Hotel artist-in-residence committee was at a bit of an impasse.
For years, the committee, comprised of artists and hotel representatives, was running into irreconcilable visions for the artist in residence. So the board called in McAdams, curator at Saint Kate – The Arts Hotel, to take a more executive role. Where their vision was clouded with many perspectives, his was singular.
According to him, there was no one better for the 2025 Pfister residency than figurative oil painter Sasha Kinens.
Kinens, on the other hand, had already reasoned that the Pfister wasn’t in her future. She’d applied for the residency twice before. In 2019, it came down to her and that year’s winner, illustrator Christopher T. Wood.
But when McAdams called in 2025 to offer her the residency, she felt it had all happened the way it did for a reason.
“I knew it just felt right,” she said. “Like, now is the time.”
With a style that’s perfectly befitting the hotel’s Victorian art collection, Kinens is now only the second artist in the program’s 17-year history to stay on as the hotel’s artist in residence for a second year.
“I love to take credit for finding Sasha because she’s here for a second term because it worked out so well,” McAdams said. “I brought Sasha on but I couldn’t find another Sasha. She’s like suis generis.”
Inspired by late 19th-century naturalism, Kinens paints narrative oil portraits from costumed models. Her rich, natural backgrounds bring a romanticism to the work. Her paintings are emotionally evocative, making moving stories of motionless portraits.
Her lush paintings hang in the Pfister’s lobby-level artist studio, where the public can get to know her and her practice.
Sasha Kinens’ artistic journey included liberal arts education
Born in Michigan, Kinens’ Wisconsin roots go back to her early childhood when her father was appointed as a pastor at a church in Racine.
Born to two people who studied art but ultimately settled into different careers, Kinens spent some of her early adolescence contemplating making a career of her own creative passion.
After graduating high school, she went to Latvia – where her parents were born – and saw her great uncle’s work for the first time. It so resembled Kinens’ style that she thought her parents had sent him a few of her own drawings.
To her, it felt like a sign to take her artwork seriously and carry on his legacy.
Not long after, she began a rigorous two-year apprenticeship with Milwaukee artist James Prohl, to build her portfolio. As his youngest student, she had to prove her commitment by paying tuition without parental support. For the first year and a half, she worked exclusively in black and white.
After her apprenticeship, she moved back to Michigan to study at Hillsdale College.
Though she was accepted into Boston School of Fine Arts and the Chicago Arts Institute, Kinens wanted a holistic liberal arts education.
“I wanted to read ‘The Existentialist’ in French with my French professor, or English literature, all the ‘Don Quixote,’ all of them, all of the classics,” she said. “That is how we build our vision to create these narrative stories and paintings, was through our history.”
This interdisciplinary sensibility became essential to Kinens’ work – though her paintings portray one moment, they evoke the nuance and narrative of an entire novel.
After college, she lived all over – including a brief two-month stint in Bali, three years in Florence, and seven years in Jersey City Heights, New Jersey, where her son Sven was born – before moving to Thiensville in 2017 to be closer to family.
Kinens’ practice has been inspired by all of her travels. From the discipline and focus she learned sharing a small studio space with three artists to the deepened appreciation she gained for realism and nature through her time in Bali.
“[Bali] did really help me find my path in using what’s already here, instead of trying to invent,” she said. “I love haute couture and fashion, but there’s the way that the Indonesians use something as simple as a leaf, you know, pressed into the mud or into cutting to create a pattern that’s essentially already there. It was really influential.”
Throughout her career, Kinens has prioritized mentoring artists of all ages. She taught at an after-school program at Elm Creative Arts School, gave private instruction to young artists in her old Bay View studio, and worked with preschoolers in Wauwatosa. She continues to teach private art therapy lessons at Tiny Bird Art Studio in the Thiensville Mill, 122 Green Bay Road, Thiensville.
Pfister artist in residence must create while conversing
Established in 2009 with Milwaukee native Reginald Baylor, the Pfister’s artist-in-residence program selects contemporary artists whose work resonates with the hotel’s long-held Victorian art collection.
Several past artists in residence have taken an experimental approach to the residency, marrying the hotel’s collection with an entirely different artistic style. Others, like Kinens, more traditionally align with the collection.
McAdams says he relishes the victory of bringing Kinens to the Pfister.
“When I was asked to help with this, I was like I got one. But I got [only] one,” he said.
According to McAdams, the Pfister residency isn’t for every artist.
Some artists might find their creativity inhibited by its quirks. Rather than the coveted tranquility of a solitary space, the Pfister Artist In Residence Studio is something of a spectacle.
With an open-door policy and floor-to-ceiling windows, it’s key that an artist can engage with hotel guests and produce work amid constant conversation. Several guests come to the hotel specifically to meet the artist-in-residence and see what she’s working on.
“Meeting and talking with @sashakinensart was one of the highlights of our stay!” one hotel guest wrote on Instagram.
For Kinens, the constant interruption has been a welcome tool to sharpen her discipline. She loves to talk with guests who visit her studio, walking them through her work and her process. She’s also learned to accept that sometimes all she can do in a day is get the eyebrows right.
“I have to give up that feeling of my goals being set,” Kinens said.
As the Pfister’s artist in residence, Kinens has experimented beyond oil painting, bringing fresh life to her work. For Gallery Night in January, the artist installed an immersive forest environment in the Pfister’s ballroom with her paintings guiding visitors through a simulated nature trail.
In addition to producing work for Gallery Nights, the artist is expected to create a legacy piece for the hotel that reflects on their residency. Though Kinens is still crafting her piece, she hopes to explore how people communicate without speaking at all.
More information: You can visit Kinens and her work during her weekly studio hours at The Pfister: 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday to Thursday, 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Friday and 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturday. For more information on Kinens and her Pfister residency, visit thepfisterhotel.com.
(This story was updated to add a video.)
Anya Sesay covers arts and culture for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Send her story ideas, things to see and people to meet at asesay@usatodayco.com. Follow her on Instagram @anyanic0lette.
Anya’s reporting is supported by the Richard and Ethel Herzfeld Foundation, the Maine-based Rabkin Foundation, and reader contributions to the Journal Sentinel Community-Funded Journalism Project. Journal Sentinel editors maintain full editorial control over all content. To support this work, visit jsonline.com/support. Checks can be addressed to Local Media Foundation (memo: “JS Community Journalism”) and mailed to P.O. Box 85015, Chicago, IL 60689.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Sasha Kinens staying on as artist in residence at The Pfister Hotel
Reporting by Anya Sesay, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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