Website: stephenperkinsart.com/

Stephen Perkins is a classically trained sculptor, painter and draughtsman. His work is steeped in the timeless art and techniques of the past and the most current and advanced methods of today. With that, the message of the work is geared to today’s life and issues. From evocative figures in sculpture and painting to statements on the experience of life in our time, Stephen’s art attempts to address these topics.

An artist is a product of his or her background and training. Stephen grew up in a diplomatic family so in early life was exposed to a wide range of cultural influences, particularly in Europe. The grandeur of that civilization, its emphasis of humanistic values and appreciation of the sense of beauty in all things was at that time clear to see.   As a young artist, Stephen came of age in an era where artistic training of a classical nature was at a low ebb. That said, it was still possible to find artists of the old school that were then quite old themselves.

Artists form themselves, self creates by nature of the choices they make of instructors and methods of training. For this, Stephen chose the finest painters and sculptors available at that time. Henry Hensche of the famed Cape Cod School of Art was his first main instructor. Following that Stephen worked with Lesley Posey, a wonderful academic sculptor and then Walker Hancock whose monuments grace many parts of the country, particularly the Capitol. There was also Deane Keller and Nelson Shanks as influences.

Stephen has taught throughout his life passing on this technical understanding of the craft of art teaching at The New York Academy of Art, The Water Street Atelier, The Grand Central Academy of Art and Janus Collaborative School of Art, all in Manhattan as well as the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and numerous workshops in the United States and abroad.

His work has been collected by institutions and individuals throughout the United States. Joseph Campbell has said that an artist’s job is to find the visual imagery that most succinctly speaks to the times in which we live. It is classical in technique and understanding but the imagery, the subjects are an attempt to give a visual meaning to the quality of life in the 21st Century. It is a personal approach but hopefully has a universal truth to it. Stephen maintains a studio on the east coast of Florida.

His workshops include many topics relating to the skills involved in creating figurative art, especially anatomical training. He specializes in the instruction of ecorche, the timeless method of three dimensional anatomical study. In short, Stephen’s lifetime of work is an attempt to fuse the advances in figurative art made throughout the centuries with an outlook that addresses the issues and conditions of humanity at the dawn of the 21st Century.