Rick Stevens

Rick Stevens was born in Sparta, Michigan and currently lives and works in New Mexico, United States. Stevens studied at Aquinas College, Grand Rapids, Michigan (1982), Kendall School of Design (1979-81) and Grand Rapids Community College, Grand Rapids, Michigan (1977-79). 

Rick Stevens' painting-based practice combines an interest in nature and science with a mystical approach to abstraction, moving beyond the constraints of direct representation to produce revelatory expressions of his experiences of the natural world. Working intuitively, Stevens' work is influenced by Eastern philosophies, the notions of uncertainty and flux associated with Quantum Physics, and the Nineteenth-Century American writers Ralph Waldo Emerson Henry David Therou whose philosophy of Transcendentalism proffered intuition over logic and espoused a deep appreciation for nature. 

Exploring the possibilities of colour, light, texture and space, and harnessing the potential of painterly accidents, Stevens has described his working process as a matter of “projecting intention, then letting go of fixed ideas."  He interprets the landscape with varying degrees of abstraction, using a variety of media including oil paint, oil stick, wax, gold leaf, sand, gauze and burlap. Often working directly in the landscape, to which he attributes a particular energy and intelligence, Stevens has developed a visual vocabulary of shapes and patterns derived from the natural world but which also suggest something beyond the visible.

Raised in an artistic household, Stevens' artist father introduced him to landscape painting from a young age. A year spent in an isolated cabin in the forests of northern Michigan in 1984 further strengthened his reverence for the sublime energy, ephemerality and mystery of Earth's fragile ecosystems. Stevens describes his practice as an open window to other realms. Through it, he attempts to make visible the underlying structure of the world around us, merging the tangible with expressions of the imperceptible, and revealing in paint the transcendent energies that engage us all in what Stevens describes as a “never-ending cosmic dance."

Rick Stevens' work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States. Retrospectives of his work have been presented at The Grand Rapids Art Museum,  Grand Rapids, Michigan (2000) and Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso, Indiana (1997). In 1988, Muskegon Museum of Art, Michigan, mounted a solo exhibition of Stevens' work, Realms of Nature: Unfolding Patterns. Other recent solo exhibitions include, Breathing Light, Hunter Squared Gallery, Santa Fe, U.S.A (2019); Dancing in Paradox, Hunter Kirkland Contemporary, Santa Fe, U.S.A (2018); Loitering in Mystery, Hunter Kirkland Contemporary, Santa Fe, U.S.A (2017); Invocations, Exhibit by Aberson, Tulsa, U.S.A (2016); The Nature of What Arises, Canfin Gallery, Tarrytown, U.S.A (2015); Wilderness Within, Hunter Kirkland Contemporary, Santa Fe, (2014); Domain Of Intangibles, Mark Gallery, Englewood, U.S.A (2013).

Stevens' work is included in public and corporate collections throughout the United States and internationally, including Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine, Las Cruces, U.S.A; Almutiaq Group, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; World Trade Center Hotel, Beijing China; Goldman Sachs, New York, U.S.A; Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso, U.S.A; and Muskegon Museum of Art, MGrand Valley State University, Michigan, U.S.A.