For Steadman, themes centered around bonded relationships and the home have become all-encompassing subject matter for his oil paintings. Biographical and in startling yet harmonious color, Steadman’s paintings are equally steeped in the traditions of both color-field abstraction and figurative realism. With subjects decidedly gentle in nature, he eschews the more traditional and aggressively masculine artistic preoccupations of heroic abstraction or the female nude. Instead, this group of intimate artworks focuses on a life lived in the county among children, horses, dogs, cats, and his partner. With his flat, economical painting style, Steadman pares down his images to their most essential yet idealized shapes. Through this timeless aesthetic, he exalts cherished quotidian activities, such as hiking, foraging, or playing an instrument, to manifest their profound meaning and beauty. In an increasingly technological world where the real and artificial have rapidly become entwined, Steadman creates paintings that revere his most tangible and vital relationships as he attempts to pinpoint his fleeting reality before it’s gone.
Ryan Steadman
Continue reading