Light is the quintessential component in Steven Gordons powerfully luminous landscapes of California. They derive their strength from the artists intimate dialogue with land and light At times I feel as if Im painting with light. Its exciting to take something so completely ephemeral and control and create with it. Since his arrival in California from the Midwest Gordon has been focusing on the visual impact of changing light effects in the Napa Valley wine growing region of California. Continuously exploring and formulating new visions, he has been producing pastel and oil paintings of rare immediacy.
Steven Gordon grew up in his native town of Waukegan, Illinois. After having been self-taught in his early years, he decided on formal training in the arts. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a bachelors degree in art. For his masters program, he chose Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri where he earned his Master of Fine Arts degree in painting.
After graduate school Steven Gordon came west to settle in the Napa Valley. He secured a job with a local winery in Yountville which turned out to be a fruitful relationship since Gordon was given an annual showing of his works at the winery visitors center. It also enabled the artist and his wife to travel annually to Europe to study various museum and gallery collections.
Certain insights might have been gained during these travels, but it was the unique character of Californias landscapes and Gordons predilection for pastels that made him find his own imagery. He painted exclusively in oils during his earlier years, doing his preliminary works in pastels They became more and more exciting to me. I discovered the immediate sensory qualities of pastel. ... My paintings are translations of the lyrical, real and abstract qualities which I observe in the unending variety of shapes, colors and textures found in the landscape. They are recreations of a specific moment in time in which light, atmosphere, earth and sky come together in celebration of the simple and profound beauty in nature. I want the viewer to literally feel the experience the bright dryness of a summer afternoon ... the private intimacy of driving alone on a rain-slicked road or of standing in the hills above a valley vista on a foggy winter morning. His visions of California never fail to do just that they totally engage the viewer.
Steven Gordons works have been shown in galleries from the Napa Valley and San Francisco to New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. The artists work has also been shown at the Members Galleries of the Philadelphia and Delaware Art Museums, and of the Albright-Knox Museum in Buffalo, New York and is represented in numerous collections worldwide.
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