Individual Artist Grant
I was awarded an individual artist grant for painting from the Maryland State Arts Council.
I will have work included in a group exhibition, "SPECTRUM: Contemporary Color Abstraction", at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts. The show runs from March 26th thru August 1st.
I will have a painting in a group exhibition, "Fuzzy Logic: Contemporary Painting After a Century of Abstract Art", at the Thompson Gallery in Weston, MA. The exhibit runs from April 9 — June 17, 2010.
Upcoming Solo Exhibitions
Recent article
Press
"Works on Paper" Catalogue Statement- John Bodkin, Director
These unique drawings combine forms and colors of the comics without the figurative transfer of images found there. The combined juxtaposition of panels and form and unlikely color and line quality in Steven’s unabashed exploration drives him into fully extending himself without regard for making his work pretty. The raw power transfers to our consciousness with an energy that can confront and question.
"New Visions" at American Contemporary Gallery-Review by Danielle Gagliardi
BMoreArt
"New Visions" Catalogue Statement- John Bodkin, Director.
While many artists fall into a comfort zone in their work, Steven is absolutely fearless and driven in his exploration as an artist. The work exhibited here is bold, vivid in its color range and unrelenting in its forms. Steven attacks the very essence of a definitive world. Good and evil, black and white, night and day, real and fantasy all become part of his aesthetics and encompass even his material and techniques.
"Naked" exhibit exposes abstract views of life
by Glenn Mcnatt, Art Critic, Baltimore Sun. Wednesday 7/19,2006 pp1E & 4E
Steven Pearson, who has the largest number of works in the show, is also an abstract painter, but his method often involves a whimsical reiteration of familiar figurative forms until their original character is no longer recognizable. In these colorful, carefully organized canvases, one senses a world of identifiable shapes that seems to lie just beyond the ken of normal perception, but nonetheless remains vitally alive and cogent.
Liquid/Solid in Two
By Pam Zappardino, Art Critic, Carroll County Times. Thursday, May 25, 2006
I walked up the stairs and was embraced by a flurry of eyelashes as I entered the Rice Gallery. Or are they feathers? Or tiny metal combs?
Dana Reifler's "Untitled" installation is a fantastic (in all its meanings) greeting for visitors to "Liquid/Solid" in McDaniel College's Petersen Hall. Myriad oil and ink on clay-coated paper forms swoop up one wall, break, and then curve around the ceiling joints at the entrance. The continuum of neutral colors - taupes, silver, blacks, grays and browns - add mystery. It is difficult to tell if these shapes are hard or soft, animate or not, reflecting Reifler's desire to play with the interface of the mechanical and biological worlds. Each installation of this work is different, she said, responding in an intuitive fashion to the available space. Her intuition here is right on.
The intuition of curators Steven Pearson and Cara Ober is right on as well. They have assembled a group of 14 artists, all abstractionists whose uniquely different art melds and clashes, but never breaks the flow. "Liquid/Solid," said Ober, "reflects the essential elements that unite all artists who paint .... Paint is unique among art media. It (has) the uncanny ability to exist in these two opposing states." That contradiction and its inherent tension bring energy and excitement to this show.
After Reifler, I was drawn to a wildly colored, vaguely human form, apparently fleeing for its life. A set designer by training, Paul Theriault saw his work come together when he first moved from canvas to a piece of purloined plywood. He carved this asymmetrical piece from a rectangular painting that seemed somehow unfinished. The result is "Ichabod Crane," with the unseen headless horseman hot on his tail, the wood adding body and texture to the thick swaths of paint.
Jo Smail uses texture as well, but to much different effect. Smail's work is spare and, from a distance, deceptively simple. "Life Is Very Oriental" is a flat, four-petaled black flower, side-spaced on a plain field of pink. Or so it seems. Up close, a textured grid, pink on pink, emerges to balance the image perfectly.
Texture and color combine in Maggie Michael's "Butterfly," liquid saffron and solid brown bubbling from the surface. Nearby, Karenna Ness bids "Bon Voyage" in layers of deepening pastels: purple, blue, yellow, pink and gray veins, a wormhole beckoning in the lower left.
If I haven't convinced you to dash over to the gallery yet, stay tuned. Next week - Part 2.
Still Liquid/Still Solid
By Pam Zappardino, Art Critic, Carroll County Times Friday, June 02, 2006
As promised, I'm back at "Liquid/Solid," a 14-artist tour de force showcasing the qualities of paint and coaxing a world from within the medium.
A new McDaniel Grad, Liz Cosby is back again, too, holding her own amongst this gathering of very experienced artists. The strength of her work commands attention, its depth and maturity remarkable, her colors and forms alive and exciting.
Calvin Edward Ramsburg's jewel tones flow from his brush and glisten on the canvas. Hints of the forms he has abstracted shimmer beneath the saturated purples, reds, golds and saffron. Ramsburg swirls you into his works, making you think and leaving you curious, wanting more.
Color, shiny and industrial, predominates in Robert Atwell's date-stamped series. His pieces have a smooth, flat look, like kids' "colorforms" melted into their backgrounds, a contrast to the many textures all around them. Adam Wolter takes color in a more subtle direction, adding texture, and a sense of incompleteness to his vaguely Rothko-esque study in mauves, gray and brown.
Steven Pearson uses color and form to build tension so tight you can feel it. Organic shapes strain against geometrics, complementary colors bleeding into shades of similar hues. "Copulating" is constrained by its frame while fitting perfectly within it. Seth Adelsberger's colors are right in your face, thick and gyrating, as if put on the canvas while it was dashing off somewhere. "Janson Acid Test Dictionary Painting" takes up an entire wall, and is, in actuality, many paintings within an incredibly unified whole. You need to spend some time to really see it.
You'll want to spend time with Cara Ober, too. The muted tones of "I Fold You Into the Silence of Myself" fit the mood, blotches and birthday candles melting away, offset by a touch of bright pink and the crisp symmetry of a white floral image, drawing the eye in a new direction. Take it in, slowly.
Michelle La Perriere also encourages contemplation, honoring her late brother with "For Vincent," subtle tones and textures punctuated by labels - an address here, a prescription there - pieces of a life, well-remembered.
The late Tom Holder was intrigued and inspired by the work of Christine Kessler. Now I know why. "Gathering/Yes" is a veritable maelstrom of life, but I would like to have seen it swirling from a pedestal in the middle of the exhibit, building energy as it goes. Its installation here lacks the force that it deserves.
These unique drawings combine forms and colors of the comics without the figurative transfer of images found there. The combined juxtaposition of panels and form and unlikely color and line quality in Steven’s unabashed exploration drives him into fully extending himself without regard for making his work pretty. The raw power transfers to our consciousness with an energy that can confront and question.
"New Visions" at American Contemporary Gallery-Review by Danielle Gagliardi
BMoreArt
"New Visions" Catalogue Statement- John Bodkin, Director.
While many artists fall into a comfort zone in their work, Steven is absolutely fearless and driven in his exploration as an artist. The work exhibited here is bold, vivid in its color range and unrelenting in its forms. Steven attacks the very essence of a definitive world. Good and evil, black and white, night and day, real and fantasy all become part of his aesthetics and encompass even his material and techniques.
"Naked" exhibit exposes abstract views of life
by Glenn Mcnatt, Art Critic, Baltimore Sun. Wednesday 7/19,2006 pp1E & 4E
Steven Pearson, who has the largest number of works in the show, is also an abstract painter, but his method often involves a whimsical reiteration of familiar figurative forms until their original character is no longer recognizable. In these colorful, carefully organized canvases, one senses a world of identifiable shapes that seems to lie just beyond the ken of normal perception, but nonetheless remains vitally alive and cogent.
Liquid/Solid in Two
By Pam Zappardino, Art Critic, Carroll County Times. Thursday, May 25, 2006
I walked up the stairs and was embraced by a flurry of eyelashes as I entered the Rice Gallery. Or are they feathers? Or tiny metal combs?
Dana Reifler's "Untitled" installation is a fantastic (in all its meanings) greeting for visitors to "Liquid/Solid" in McDaniel College's Petersen Hall. Myriad oil and ink on clay-coated paper forms swoop up one wall, break, and then curve around the ceiling joints at the entrance. The continuum of neutral colors - taupes, silver, blacks, grays and browns - add mystery. It is difficult to tell if these shapes are hard or soft, animate or not, reflecting Reifler's desire to play with the interface of the mechanical and biological worlds. Each installation of this work is different, she said, responding in an intuitive fashion to the available space. Her intuition here is right on.
The intuition of curators Steven Pearson and Cara Ober is right on as well. They have assembled a group of 14 artists, all abstractionists whose uniquely different art melds and clashes, but never breaks the flow. "Liquid/Solid," said Ober, "reflects the essential elements that unite all artists who paint .... Paint is unique among art media. It (has) the uncanny ability to exist in these two opposing states." That contradiction and its inherent tension bring energy and excitement to this show.
After Reifler, I was drawn to a wildly colored, vaguely human form, apparently fleeing for its life. A set designer by training, Paul Theriault saw his work come together when he first moved from canvas to a piece of purloined plywood. He carved this asymmetrical piece from a rectangular painting that seemed somehow unfinished. The result is "Ichabod Crane," with the unseen headless horseman hot on his tail, the wood adding body and texture to the thick swaths of paint.
Jo Smail uses texture as well, but to much different effect. Smail's work is spare and, from a distance, deceptively simple. "Life Is Very Oriental" is a flat, four-petaled black flower, side-spaced on a plain field of pink. Or so it seems. Up close, a textured grid, pink on pink, emerges to balance the image perfectly.
Texture and color combine in Maggie Michael's "Butterfly," liquid saffron and solid brown bubbling from the surface. Nearby, Karenna Ness bids "Bon Voyage" in layers of deepening pastels: purple, blue, yellow, pink and gray veins, a wormhole beckoning in the lower left.
If I haven't convinced you to dash over to the gallery yet, stay tuned. Next week - Part 2.
Still Liquid/Still Solid
By Pam Zappardino, Art Critic, Carroll County Times Friday, June 02, 2006
As promised, I'm back at "Liquid/Solid," a 14-artist tour de force showcasing the qualities of paint and coaxing a world from within the medium.
A new McDaniel Grad, Liz Cosby is back again, too, holding her own amongst this gathering of very experienced artists. The strength of her work commands attention, its depth and maturity remarkable, her colors and forms alive and exciting.
Calvin Edward Ramsburg's jewel tones flow from his brush and glisten on the canvas. Hints of the forms he has abstracted shimmer beneath the saturated purples, reds, golds and saffron. Ramsburg swirls you into his works, making you think and leaving you curious, wanting more.
Color, shiny and industrial, predominates in Robert Atwell's date-stamped series. His pieces have a smooth, flat look, like kids' "colorforms" melted into their backgrounds, a contrast to the many textures all around them. Adam Wolter takes color in a more subtle direction, adding texture, and a sense of incompleteness to his vaguely Rothko-esque study in mauves, gray and brown.
Steven Pearson uses color and form to build tension so tight you can feel it. Organic shapes strain against geometrics, complementary colors bleeding into shades of similar hues. "Copulating" is constrained by its frame while fitting perfectly within it. Seth Adelsberger's colors are right in your face, thick and gyrating, as if put on the canvas while it was dashing off somewhere. "Janson Acid Test Dictionary Painting" takes up an entire wall, and is, in actuality, many paintings within an incredibly unified whole. You need to spend some time to really see it.
You'll want to spend time with Cara Ober, too. The muted tones of "I Fold You Into the Silence of Myself" fit the mood, blotches and birthday candles melting away, offset by a touch of bright pink and the crisp symmetry of a white floral image, drawing the eye in a new direction. Take it in, slowly.
Michelle La Perriere also encourages contemplation, honoring her late brother with "For Vincent," subtle tones and textures punctuated by labels - an address here, a prescription there - pieces of a life, well-remembered.
The late Tom Holder was intrigued and inspired by the work of Christine Kessler. Now I know why. "Gathering/Yes" is a veritable maelstrom of life, but I would like to have seen it swirling from a pedestal in the middle of the exhibit, building energy as it goes. Its installation here lacks the force that it deserves.
