Savannah, Georgia based activist figurative painter Mattie Sterling was born in Charleston, South Carolina. Thereafter, Sterling’s predisposition to give rise to a matter before the usual or proper time is an attribute that has followed into her feminist practice. Sterling currently has a Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting from the Savannah College of Art and Design and has aspirations of obtaining advanced academic degrees.

Sterling is a feminist, activist, writer, critic, and painter who has devoted her lifes work to advocating for equality between the sexes. In consequence, Sterling employs her lifestyle and artistic practice to oppose heterosexist tyranny and the traditions of hierarchy over the civil and identity politics of women, women's empowerment, and women’s sexuality in favor of a positive social change.

Sterling has spent the past two years engaging in open-studio exhibitions, written criticism around Feminist art practice, and partaken in discussions about beliefs behind sexuality, sex positivity, and the “hypocrisy that subvert it”. The female figure and the emancipation of women’s sexuality and sexual authority over their bodies have continued to be an area of provenance behind Sterling’s paintings. In her most recent body of work, Sterling employs the sexual capital experienced behind her models to address the questionable beliefs behind women’s sexuality and the social dogma that surrounds it.