Steve Halvorsen

Oil on canvas

2014

21 x 34 inches

I have a long time  fascination with the collision of the two worlds with the European "discovery" of the Americas, and all that has happened since.  It is a story of both creation and destruction. I cannot look away, I find it the most compelling event in human history. For it we are both richer and poorer.

Oil on canvas

2012

40 x 30 inches

In an effort to capture the immense space of the New Mexico landscape in a vertical format instead of the usual horizontal, I find there is something quiet and compelling between the elements in this painting. I am reminded of something Richard Diebenkorn said to the effect of- missing the sea of his native California, during his years in New Mexico he realized our sky becomes the vast sea. 

Oil on canvas

2012

36 x 46 inches

When moving to New Mexico from Chicago, the scale of the landscape thrilled me, but also made me feel very exposed. Each juniper and cholla stands out in isolation on the short grass prairie. I have come to embrace being in the sparse landscape, but there is always a sense of being far from home. 

Oil on canvas

2006

40 x 60 inches

This work was painted during a time when communication was difficult, it was only later that I realized this painting foreshadowed large changes in my life. "For Change of Weather" is an image of a life in transition,  representing two individuals, or two parts of one individual struggling to be be heard, reconciled or resolved.

Oil on panel

2013

6 x 12 inches

The nearness of the past, of sailing ships and Victorian fashions, fills me with wonder. It is near but looks so strange and remote. My grandparents were all born in the Victorian period, and they all traveled in jets and saw the moon landing on television. I am always trying (struggling) to understand the nature of time passing

oil on panel

2013

6 x 12 inches

The coexistence in space of a bison and a pioneer woman on the Great Plains brings to mind the meeting of opposites, whether within one person or outside in the larger world. What the Bison represents in his wildness and rootedness in place, and the woman represents in her civilization and artifice, marks the great change of the American West

oil on panel

2014

8 x 24 inches

Lost on a foreign shore, the first to see a new land often do not get to tell others. Adventure and discovery and risk are part of living a life, even if we live quiet lives. 

oil on canvas

2014

21 x 34 inches

Many years ago I saw two old sailing ships left to rot in a harbor in Maine. It was foggy, and I felt like a time traveler (who could not believe his eyes?). This experience changed my art. I see the ships as portraying lives that do not always go as planned, as signifying the nature of change, and the passage of time. 

oil on panel

2013

6 x 12 inches

This painting was inspired by a very short story by Lydia Davis entitled Love. The story is about an overpowering urge to be close to another person, even when it it not possible.