Focal Point: Stephen Datz
  fponly | "Great light, spontaneity and emotion can be found in Datz's works" - Informed Collector
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Artwork by Stephen Datz
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Other Artists whose works appeal to Stephen Datz
Skip Whitcomb
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Stephen Datz's Main Artist Website
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Rocky Mountain Plein Air Painters Page on Stephen Datz
Art Galleries Representing Stephen Datz
Act I Gallery
Taos, NM - (505)-758-7831
Main Street Gallery - Carbondale
Carbondale, CO - (970)-963-3775
Main Street Gallery - Glenwood Springs
Glenwood Spgs, CO - (970)-945-4817
Paint Horse Gallery
Breckenridge, CO - (970)-453-6813
Wild Horse Gallery
Steamboat Springs, CO - (970)-879-7660 or (970)-879-2220
Overview
Click Here to go to the website for artist Stephen DatzA dedicated plein-air painter, Stephen works on-location year round, painting all over Colorado and the western U.S. His distinctive oil paintings possess an evocative and compelling visual presence.
Of his work, he says, "My paintings are moments of discovery and wonder given form - glimpses beyond the surface of both artist and subject and into the essential nature of both. They are the measure of my experience of all that is mysterious, beautiful, and sublime in the natural landscape, and the medium through which that spirit is celebrated."
Stephen is a Signature Member of the Rocky Mountain Plein-Air Painters, and his award-winning work has been featured in several regional publications as well as Southwest Art and Plein-Air magazine.
Biography
I was born in Denver in 1968, and spent my younger years as a suburban kid on the eastern outskirts of the city. My family moved to Loveland, a small town on the northern Front Range, in 1980.Drawing has been second nature to me for as long as I can remember. As an imaginative youngster, I particularly enjoyed science fiction and fantasy, and spent a lot of time creating fanciful images inspired by the stories I had read and the movies and TV shows I had seen. My father exposed me to fine art at a very young age, taking me along on his regular trips to the Denver Art Museum and introducing me to classical music.
I was drawing constantly throughout my primary and secondary school years, always receiving encouragement and support from my teachers. In high school I began illustrating freelance, and was the staff artist and cartoonist for my school newspaper.
Though I had always excelled in my artistic pursuits, I also did well in math and the sciences, and this led me to enter college as a student of applied mathematics rather than a student of art. It didn't take me long to figure out that this was a mistake, and that my true calling was to pursue and develop my natural artistic talent.
I enrolled in the arts program at Colorado State University, and was exposed to a wide range of media. I found my tendency towards realism discouraged in favor of a more "modern" approach, so I tended to eschew the fine arts curriculum, taking as many figure drawing, design, and illustration courses as I could.
It was during my time at CSU that I met my wife, a fortuitous introduction that would prove to be a pivotal event in my development as an artist. Though I had spent the latter half of my childhood at the rural western edge of Loveland, I was still essentially a city kid. My bride-to-be, an outdoorsy native of Aspen, introduced me to backpacking with a trip to the desert country of southern Utah. The staggering beauty and power of the canyon country inspired me deeply, and transformed my interest in the landscape from passing fancy to driving passion.
I graduated from CSU in 1992, setting aside my nascent design career and resolving to pursue a career as a fine artist. My wife and I had moved to the mountain town of Carbondale, Colorado, where her job as the manager of a large horse ranch afforded me the time and space to concentrate on my art. Pastels were my medium of choice at that point, and I was using photographs I had taken on my camping trips as reference material for large drawings of desert landscapes. I enjoyed little success in those first few years, and I was becoming increasingly frustrated with my medium and methods. I felt tremendously isolated and uncertain about my future as an artist.
My father, concerned by my career impasse, offered to pay the tuition for a workshop taught by an old acquaintance of his - successful and immensely skilled artist Skip Whitcomb. Skip introduced me to the practice of plein-air painting and got me working in oils – a medium that I had all but given up on after my dismal experience with it in college. He also opened my eyes onto the art world that I had never glimpsed in college – a world of artists both in America and abroad who had continued in the traditional ways of painting long after the "modernisms" of the early 20th century had taken root. That week long workshop was nothing short of a revelation.
Armed with new tools, knowledge, and renewed enthusiasm, I dedicated myself to painting on location every day - in all seasons and all weather. I seldom reached the end of a day without having painted at least one field sketch. During those early years I also took additional workshops with Skip, Ned Jacob, and Michael Lynch, and enjoyed going out painting with Dan Young, a plein-air painter who lived near me in Glenwood Springs. I began to build a book collection, picking up monographs and exhibition catalogs whenever I could, and would take in museum and gallery shows at every opportunity. I felt I had finally found my way, and a place in long and distinguished line of consummate craftsmen who held to time-honored traditional methods and have enriched the world with the enduring beauty of their creative vision.
WORKING PHILOSOPHY
I approach my work with, as jazz musician Stan Getz put it, "an unpretentiousness, spontaneity, and poetry of honest emotion."
Plein-air painting offers an incomparable sense of freedom; a way to put aside everything but the raw sensations of the immediate moment, and revel in the significance of silence, the pleasure of discovery, the value of solitude, and the astonishing and humbling vastness of the natural world.
Being on location, to me, is a bit like fishing. I love the diversity of subjects that the western U.S. offers, and enjoy traveling and painting wherever I am. Wherever I find myself, I remain receptive to the ideas that the landscape suggests, rather than approach it with a set agenda. As I open up to my surroundings ideas begin to take shape, and I begin sketching, moving beyond my first impression, discovering which possibilities among nature's endless variety are most meaningful to me, and refining those concepts through small, quick thumbnail drawings.
Once I have settled on a subject and composition, my field study proceeds fairly quickly. I work on small canvases outdoors – doing so allows me to rapidly get a complete impression of my subject despite the ever changing light, and also allows me the freedom to explore several different subjects in a day.
Back in the studio, the sketches, field studies, and photos made on location serve as the jumping off point for larger, more carefully orchestrated works. This is where I revisit ideas that I feel deserve exploration on a larger canvas, and refine ideas that I might feel are sound but that didn't quite come together in the field. I endeavor to make these studio paintings fresh interpretations of the field work that informs them, and to allow them to develop organically. The luxury of time that the studio affords creates a kind of dialogue between me and the painting, allowing me to take it in the direction that it suggests and develop it at its own pace.
Whether done in the field or the studio, the essence of my work is more than the mere appearance of the landscape; it is the experience of it. My paintings are moments of discovery and wonder given form - glimpses beyond the surface of both subject and artist and into the essential nature of both. They are the measure of my experience of all that is beautiful, mysterious, and sublime in the natural landscape, and the medium through which that spirit is celebrated.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
Main Street Gallery - Carbondale, CO, 2007
Act I Gallery - Taos, NM, 2007
Act I Gallery - Taos, NM, 2006
Act I Gallery - Taos, NM, 2005
Second Nature - Western Colo. Ctr. for the Arts, Grand Junction, CO, 2004
Valentine Fine Art - Livingston, MT, 2003
Valentine Fine Art - Livingston, MT, 2002
ELEMENTAL - Colorado National Monument Landscapes - Western Colorado Center for the Arts, Grand Junction, CO, 2002
Main Street Gallery - Carbondale, CO, 2001
The 4 Seasons of Colorado - Elizabeth Schlosser Fine Art, Denver, CO, 2001
Elizabeth Schlosser Fine Art - Denver, CO, 1999
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
Rocky Mountain Plein-Air Painters 2007 National Show
16th Annual Colorado Governor's Invitational Show & Sale, 2007
Rocky Mountain Plein-Air Painters 2006 National Show
Rocky Mountain Plein-Air Painters 2006 Signature Members Show
Rocky Mountain Plein-Air Painters 2005 National Show
Paint Horse Gallery, Breckenridge, CO - 3 Artist Show, 2006
Paint Horse Gallery, Breckenridge, CO - 3 Artist Show, 2005
Main Street Gallery, Glenwood Springs, CO - 3 Artist Show, 2005
Helper Plein-Air Festival - Helper, Utah, 2004
Valentine Fine Art 2004 Summer Landscape Show - Livingston, Montana
Light & Shadow - Abend Gallery - Denver, CO, 2004
Invited Artist - Western Colorado Center for the Arts Annual Benefit Auction, Grand Junction, CO 2001-present
4-Person Summer Show, Main Street Gallery - Glenwood Springs, CO, 2003
Invited Artist - Earth, Sky, Fire, Water, Paint - Western Colorado Center for the Arts, Grand Junction, CO, 2002
Invited Artist - Contemporary Colorado 2001 - Western Colorado Center for the Arts, Grand Junction, CO, 2001
Grand Junction Brush & Palette Club Judged Exhibition, Grand Junction, CO, 2001
Invited Artist - Roaring Fork Plein-Air Exhibition - Aspen, CO, 2000, 1999
New Visions II, Colorado Mountain College, Glenwood Springs, CO, 1999
ACCOLADES:
Best Of Show, RMPAP National Show, 2007
Artists' Choice Award, Best Painting, RMPAP National Show, 2006
Award Of Merit, RMPAP National Show, 2006
Artists' Choice Award, Best Painting, RMPAP Signature Members Show, 2006
Directors' Choice Award, RMPAP, 2006
Honorable Mention, Helper Plein-Air Festival, 2004
1st Place Oil Painting, Grand Junction Brush & Palette Club Judged Exhibition, 2001
Honorable Mention, Colorado Spgs. Art Guild 52nd Annual Juried Exhibition, 2000
Juror's Choice Award, Glenwood Springs Fall Art Festival, 1997
2nd Place Overall, Professional Landscape Category, Glenwood Springs Fall Art Festival, 1997
Honorable Mention, Professional Landscape Category, Glenwood Springs Fall Art Festival, 1997
Honorable Mention, Professional Landscape Category, Glenwood Springs Fall Art Festival, 1996
PUBLICITY:
Collector's Choice, Southwest Art Magazine, October 2007
Feature Article, October 12, 2007 Glenwood Springs Post-Independent
Artists To Watch, Southwest Art Magazine, March 2007
Feature Article, Taos News, May 27, 2006
Feature Article, Albuquerque Journal, May 27, 2006
Artist Profile, October 2005 Cowboys & Indians Magazine
Feature Article, June 2005 Plein-Air Magazine
Art Watch column, Wild Blue Yonder Magazine, May 2005
Feature Article, Taos News, March 5, 2005
Cover Artist, May/June 2004 SkyWest Magazine
Feature Article, April 2004 Grand Junction Free Press
Feature Article, May 2002 Grand Junction Daily Sentinel
Feature Article, September 2001 Aspen Times
Feature Article, September 2001 Glenwood Springs Post-Independent
MEMBERSHIPS:
Signature Member, Rocky Mountain Plein-Air Painters
Upcoming Events and Exhibits
Upcoming Workshops
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