NOBELARTS
Stephen Nobel
Biography
Art gave me a path. Conflicted during the discordant era of the 60s and 70s, opportunities to learn about and make art truly were gifts. They gave me authenticity. The prospect that art could change my life changed my life. The west gave me optimism.
Years and many paintings later, after serving luxury brands, educational institutions and nonprofit organizations in the markets for art and design worldwide (currently on the board of the Danforth Museum of Art), I returned to the west from New York City to Livingston, Montana to learn again from the west; to evolve as an artist and rise or fall by braving perils and finding discoveries specific to myself. There is biography in this work. Living in the west, seeing bigger and evolving as an artist.
Artist Statement
My paintings and installations start with my vision to see in them that which I have not seen yet, and so that another person may see in my art that which I see, thereby forming a personal attachment and learning something about themselves.
An affair with abstraction has evolved to afford me a visual vocabulary unbound by narrative or allegory. I try to be fluent with the fundamental elements of my art: scale, pattern, color, shape, dimension shadow, texture and material.
My renewed western sensibility and awareness of its unique iconography inspires new art in a new language for seeing - inventing what we apprehend rather than depicting it. Place is a determinative element and a precondition for work.
Lately, I have been interpreting it in large, raw canvas and liquid acrylic used as stain, manipulating the material by shredding, staining, pleating , stitching, folding and marking to resonate with that western iconography.
Solo Exhibition Echo Arts, Bozeman MT 2021
Solo Exhibition Danforth Museum of Art, Livingston MT 2022
Solo Exhibition Holter Museum of Art, Helena MT COMING 2025