About Steven Patton
Steve Patton always comes back to portraiture. While he has dabbled in other areas, like landscape and abstract, the face and its range of emotion always beckons him back, demanding he study further complexity and mystery. He sees the world in sets of three, and thus extends this perspective to his examination of faces as well. First, is the physical structure maintained from the skull. Then, there is the mask, or the projected façade that a person puts on. The final layer is more nebulous, a hidden spiritual dimension. His goal as an artist is to unite the two visible parts as well as the more subtle inner one into a singular manifestation the viewer can appreciate. To achieve this goal, he employs deft use of color, line, and nuanced spaces. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a Minor in Media from the College of New Jersey. He has participated in several exhibitions in the New Jersey area and is featured in private collections in New Jersey and Maryland.
New Brunswick Art Salon 2021 – Oil and Mixed Media: “Bonds Beyond Time”
Artist Personal Website: https://jstevenpattonart.com
Email: jstevenpattonart@gmail.com
Artist Statement
I love painting portraits, whether they are of living, deceased, self or imagined origins. Sure, I have dabbled in landscape and abstract endeavors but I always come back to portraiture. Many of my earliest works as a teenager were of faces plucked from my imagination or reproductions of the old masters.
I find something mysterious and fascinating about the countenances that I paint. There is a trinity to be found in the visage of every human being, I believe. We can look to science, religion, music and literature to recognize the many examples of triads we live with every day; solid, liquid, gas; space, time, matter; the religious holy trinity; the three physical dimensions and the three primary colors are but a few.
My study of faces has led me to become a collector of masks from around the world and skulls of precious stone. I look at these as manifestations of two parts of the triangle in my creative process, the skull being the physical structure and the mask as the projected façade. My personal mission in painting is to unify these two aspects of our being with the third… the hidden spiritual dimension. Color, line and attention to the nuances of space are my tools
Exhibitions
2021 i19 Gallery –Orange Reclaimed Juried Exhibition
2021 Studio Montclair Privilege, Power and Everyday Life, Juried
2020 South Orange Maplewood Studio Artist Studio Tour
2019 Tewksbury Historical Society Juried Art Exhibition
2010 Sussex County Arts and Heritage Council Juried Exhibition