Steve Hurd

STEVE HURD (1956 - ): Steve Hurd is an American contemporary painter based in Los Angeles, known for transforming found images and popular-culture materials into expressive paintings that examine consumerism, mass media, politics, and American society. Born in Washington, D.C., Hurd earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1979 and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1988, where he studied with artists Chris Burden, Paul McCarthy, and Mike Kelley. His work draws on imagery from advertisements, magazines, news photography, and everyday visual culture, reinterpreting familiar subjects through bold colors, gestural brushwork, and deliberately distorted or pixelated effects. Some of his most recognized paintings address the Iraq War and the media's portrayal of conflict, including his series depicting flag-draped military coffins. Hurd has exhibited in Los Angeles, New York, and Brussels and received a 2005 fellowship from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, as well as artist fellowships from the City of Los Angeles.