American, b. 1964, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota
stevenjlevin.com

Steven J Levin is an artist trained in the atelier method similar to that of 19th century Paris; his oil paintings apply a traditional aesthetic to modern themes. Levin draws his influence from a variety of sources: the masters, photography, and the cinema He infuses his paintings with a classical ethos going back to Titian.

His figurative paintings convey beauty, ranging from scenes of dim billiard halls with studied figures leaning intently under pools of light as they contemplate the table, to the cool brilliance of an afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum in which admirers of past masters become the works of art themselves. Something as prosaic as an office building’s revolving door can transcend the moment.

One series of still lifes, Books and Butterflies, earned the top award for a still life painting from the ARC Salon of 2016. In the collection, beautiful old books are juxtaposed with butterflies that flit around the arrangement or alight on the pages, creating a visual simile of delicate pages and butterfly wings.

Levin has exhibited widely and has taken part in significant group and solo shows in San Francisco, New York, London, Beijing and Barcelona. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and prizes in national competitions including the American Society of Portrait Artists, the Art Renewal Center, American Artist Magazine, the Salmagundi Club, Oil Painters of America, and the American Artist’s Professional League.

Artist Statement

Essentially, my paintings are about beauty. Whether it be in my still life work, where I begin with a consideration of just the abstract elements of form and color, and then try to build interest with the careful arrangement of objects, or in the interior scenes which are usually about light, atmosphere, and mood, beauty is always the first subject.

In some of my work I enjoy a kind of visual pun, as in the still life series called Plumage, where the juxtaposition of hats and bird’s nests are so similar in shape and with each having the element of feathers. The paintings of my museum series are undertaken with an implied wink at the depiction of paintings within paintings.

Though I see painting as first and foremost a craft, it isn’t only that. Painting is about projecting that craft through a personality, memory and emotion in the attempt to capture an intangible thing which speaks in a language unavailable to any other mode of expression.