Steve Armes was born
in 1958 and took an early interest in art. He was fascinated
by the illustrators of the Golden Age. When he began his formal
study of art in college at San Jose State University, he hoped
to learn to paint like the old masters. He was disillusioned
by the trend to promote avant-garde art and the disparagement
of traditional painting. He found a teacher who went against
the grain and taught the fundamentals of art as practiced for
four centuries. His name was Maynard Dixon Stewart, and he was
trained by Frank Vincent DuMond who studied in Paris in the nineteenth
century and was a friend of Whistler, Sargent and William Merritt
Chase. From Stewart, Armes learned the tenants of academic painting
and derived a love for painting the landscape.
Armes learned the way that eighteenth and nineteenth century
landscape painters would work directly from nature, doing small
oil color sketches on location to use as the basis for creating
larger, more definitive paintings in the studio. He also came
to understand that simply copying a photograph would never produce
the kind of natural representation of nature that has been the
goal of the great landscapists he admires.
Through many years of study from nature and studio work, Armes
has realized his goal of creating paintings which are both simple
but stunning in their presentation of the beauty that he sees
around him. He is quickly becoming recognized as one of America’s
important painters.
Mr. Armes is a part of Triad, a group of three American painters
(www.triad-threeamericanpainters.com)
pursuing traditional art. Their inaugural museum show was September
9-October 28 at the Newington-Cropsey, Hastings-on-Hudson, New
York. It was followed by a show in the Summer of 2007 at David
Dike Fine Art in Dallas, Tx. They have been invited to exhibit
again at The Newington-Cropsey in fall of 2010. |