WHAT TYPE OF WORK/ART DO YOU DO?

I am predominantly a landscape painter, and my preferred medium is oils, though I do also work in pastel, gouache, and a bit of monoprint. I am attracted to wilderness and try to capture nature’s feral side and wild beauty. The natural world also has a voice and a story and it’s speaking to us at this critical time. Expressing that is one of my primary themes. What better subject in this pursuit than Te Wao Nui o Tiriwa, the Waitakere Ranges and coast? I guess I am an artist, activist and advocate all at once.

HOW WERE YOU FIRST INTRODUCED TO THIS TYPE OF WORK/ARTISTIC PRACTICE?

Early! My father was an artist in the fine art tradition. I later went to art school in California. Throughout my life art galleries have been a go to place and provided me the opportunity to get up close and personal to great art.

I spent much of my life as an aid and humanitarian worker only returning to art in the last 10 years. Those travels took me to galleries and exhibits as diverse as Paris and Ulan Bator, Florence and Bogotá, London and Manila. I learned so much just by looking.

HOW HAS YOUR  WORK/ARTISTIC PRACTICE CHANGED AND DEVELOPED OVER THE YEARS? WHAT FACTORS DO YOU THINK AFFECTED THIS?

I have become clearer in my intention and confident in my skills. I am pursuing a visual language to better express the presence of the sacred in creation with its unique and needed voice.  I want my art to move beyond a merely decorative function to create paintings which are more like an ‘Ikon’ with an inner life capable of speaking.  

I enjoy painting in a more classical tradition, rubbing shoulders with the past, and yet with a modern edge. I’ve learned over time to trust both my creative instincts and the liveliness of paint. I have surrounded myself with better painters than myself as mentors and colleagues and I have thrown myself into art history and theory and discovered painting as a daily spiritual practice.

NAME YOUR FAVOURITE SECRET SPOTS YOU LIKE TO VISIT IN THE WAITAKERE RANGES

Shhhhh. . . they’re secret right?  I know where there is a wonderful deep swimming hole that has an eel in it that bites, and I have a scar to prove it! Ancient stone petroglyphs. A natural cave that leads to a hidden coastal vale.

You can meet visit Steve at his studio surrounded by the most beautiful slice of nature on Mountain Road, Henderson Valley.