Artist’s Biography
Stephen was born in Erie, PA and has since lived in many places both in the US and abroad. As a high school student he went overseas twice as a foreign exchange student, the first time to Bogota, Colombia for two months, and then to Boras, Sweden for a year. It was in Sweden that he decided to pursue art as a career. He attended Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, graduating with a B.F.A. During this time he lived in New York City on a residency program with artist Red Grooms, and then traveled to The Gambia where he lived for two months and worked as a volunteer for Operation Crossroads Africa. He went on to do graduate work at the University of Pennsylvania where he was awarded an M.F.A.
Stephen lived for four years in Philadelphia after graduating, painting and working as a muralist and teaching at an after-school children’s art workshop. From there he traveled to Thailand where he taught English in a refugee camp on the Thai-Burmese border. There he helped some of his students begin a painting project to raise funds for their school, and had the wonderful experience of teaching students who had never painted before. Three years later he went to Pusan, South Korea to teach English for two years, and then traveled for nine months through Nepal, India, Thailand, and Indonesia. Returning to the US, he settled in Athens, OH for seven years.
In Ohio Stephen became a residency artist with the Ohio Arts Council and conducted numerous artist-in-residence programs in elementary and high schools statewide. He received two Individual Artist’s Fellowships from the OAC and a residency fellowship at the Headlands Center fro the Arts in Sausalito, CA.
Stephen moved to Carbondale, IL in 2002, where he has set up a studio and continued to paint, as he has always done. He has become a residency artist with the Illinois Arts Council, and conducts residencies with both that organization and the OAC. He has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally, including an exhibition at the American Ambassador’s Residence in New Delhi, India. His work has been represented in three separate issues of the competitive journal New American Paintings.