Stacy became set on being a painter as he drew and painted his way through his early teen years. Early on he was enamored with the paintings of knights in shining armor, N. C. Wyeth’s pirate illustrations, and Norman Rockwell’s Saturday Evening Post covers.

 

"I’ve never questioned what I wanted to be, I knew I would be making art."

 

Stacy majored in illustration at Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts) and with enhanced skills, he began illustrating professionally while still a student. After graduating and illustrating for several major magazines he became interested in not only illustrating for magazines but in designing them as well.

 

After years of illustrating-designing magazines, Stacy’s graphic design business evolved to become a full-service advertising agency located in Morris County, NJ. For the next fifteen years, Stacy would be making art so that his clients could better visualize their ads, brochures and business videos. But as it neared the year 2000 a big change for his business was in the air. Computers were making it easy for clients to produce their own marketing materials, the web became business dominant and budgets dried up after the Dot Com Bubble crash of 2000.

 

While he was sorry to see the advertising business go, Stacy was excited about getting back to doing what he did best, he is returning to painting. He has spent the last eighteen years establishing his presence as a fine artist painting contemporary realism first in New Jersey and Pennsylvania and now in Delaware. 

 

Besides the awards and galleries displaying and selling his portraits, figure, and landscape studio paintings, Stacy has become particularly adept at painting the landscape “en plein air” (a French term for painting outdoors as opposed to painting in the studio). For his plein air painting efforts, he has been juried into several of the major plein air painting events in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland.