Were you influenced by someone special (other artist(s), teachers, a family member, friend, etc.)?
My father, Allen Steely, has always been interested in photography as a hobby and he influenced me by seeing and pointing out the beauty in the world around me.  In college, my painting professor, Kevin Sparks, greatly influenced how I look at painting and communicate through metaphor.  I have been influenced by a variety of great artists from the past including and not limited to the following: Caspar David Friedrich, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Kathe Kollwitz, Lucian Freud.   Recently I have been influenced by local Indiana artists Caroline Mecklin and Jim Gerard.

What do you generally try to achieve with your art?
Through painting and drawing, I attempt to create subtle metaphors layer by layer in order that I might achieve a greater understanding of the natural world.  I work with natural objects juxtaposed with transitions in time. I try to walk the line between abstraction and realism and create a composition that speaks to a viewer on several levels.

What were you trying to communicate with the piece Black & White Herd?
The current work begins with butterflies as a reference point and then takes flight into an examination of speed, pattern, and the imagination.

Do you feel you were successful?
Yes, to some extent.  I am always looking ways to improve, and better visually present, and communicate.

What medium or media do you prefer and why?
I prefer oils, because I am interested in how the process parallels my thought process.  Also, I like the way that the finished oil painting looks.  I enjoy the depth and variation of colors, tones, and light.  I recently have been interested in using watercolor focusing on the transparency of the colors.  I also enjoy working in black and white charcoal, conte, and digital photography.

How would you describe your artistic process?
For this past series:  I carefully consider my subject matter and different implications that the viewer might generate when they encounter the subject matter.  Then I decide on a composition that is dynamic.  I pick a canvas shape and size that will enhance the dynamic, moving, living nature of the piece.  Then, I begin to block out the basic shapes of the butterfly wings so that they open or close.  I decide which wings I want to hide during the opening and closing process.  I begin by looking at an actual butterfly (or an image I took with my camera (I prefer not to use the camera, but with butterflies, I sometimes have to in order to figure out the patterns on the wings).  Then I put away the picture and develop the painting layer by layer adding a light source with shadows, and developing the colors so that the painting is unified.  I try to keep the initial ideas of time, motion, life, struggle, overcoming, etc. in front of me during the process so that I do not become lost in the process.

Has your art changed substantially during your career? If so, how?
The unifying theme of my major series has been animation and an interest in the metaphysical ideas of speed and time as seen in joints of bones, flowers, and butterflies.  (I call my paintings “dynamic still life”) As I move ahead, I intend to keep that theme, but am open to other ideas as I grow as an artist.

This is an interesting time to introduce this mini-series as the time corresponds to the Easter season.  However, instead of intricate designs upon eggs, I have placed brown eggshells in a pattern with an emphasis on their present emptiness.  They are the remnants or shells of what was once there.  The eggshell is broken. To me the shell is something that has been overcome.  Think about times when you have grown and developed and broken out of a shell and left the pieces leading up to the empty shell.  The shell has been conquered and lies overcome.  The pieces point to the emptiness and defeat of what the shell stood for.

The word “articulation” denotes a joint of bones, a correlation or interconnection of ideas, or an act of utterance. This body of work “articulates articulations.” Using joint-like articulations to create titles, the names of the works are meant to prompt a contemplative connecting that starts between the verbal and the visual. These works were created, on both material and contemplative levels, in order to suggest particularity of relationships, life, and quintessential hope.

Here, drawings and paintings present moveable joints of human, skeletal, dry bones. Dramatically lit artificial skeletons are placed in settings that include drapery, glass, panel, and/or negative spaces of marks that react to the joint. The orientation of the paper for the drawings, which suggests portrait space, complements the orientation of the paintings, which prompts a more environmental, horizontal setting. Sometimes there is a piece of glass in the background that reflects the bone in a way that may parallel the ‘reflection’ of the bone in the viewer. When this happens, a type of trinity emerges as an intersection of the following ideas: general lifelessness (mere reflection on glass), possibility for actualization (given joint), and the realized life of the viewer. Sometimes the negative spaces seem interwoven into a reaction of the positive joint. Perhaps there is a struggle or energy reflecting life. Purposefully, in order to join the negative and positive space, the joints are often placed in non-central locations in the works. Then again, the background might be a tangible thing such as a panel or drapery that allows a shadow to fall against it. Consequently, a second trio of shadow, object, and reflection might appear.

Perhaps one can consider the implications of a treatment of craft that reflects the tenuous, life, texture, and color of a bone. The support is primed in order to be reminiscent of the texture and color of bone. Bone illusions are formed using additive (graphite/turpentine, or paint) and subtractive (eraser, or rag) work that is layered complexly, and created in a manner that flows from larger general forms toward more particular detail. The pace of gesture and calligraphic marks, that acquires strength as the joint forms illusionally, begins with a “gestural core.” This is commonly associated with responsive “life” drawing. A somewhat theatric setting, described through intentional lighting and diagonal directions of the cropped, enlarged joints of bones, is the stage in which fairly aggressive marks create an ironic sense of detail. A whole person approach to drawing, including an athletic response of the body and mark maker to the referent, results in marks that are particular, corrected, and layered. A combination of referent and the faith of the drawer-painter perhaps created and stirred life on the page. In fact, when these were created, the maker was in a shadow and cried out with every work for the life and renewal to continue forth from inner wells of hope and faith.

These depictions were created with the purpose of life rather than some cultural iconography which connects deadening cliche of bones to death. Oil color, applied in limited palates, may infer possible vitality in the referent through relation and juxtaposition of value, hue, and saturation. A narrative is formed as these joints, which are incomplete, come together and interact in a process of renewal. One bone selflessly gives way as the other advances. Their shapes are formed in order to fit and interact in a beautiful empathy. In the perfected joint there is a true freedom for the members. Due to this infinite uniqueness, a perfected communion between the members arises. This freedom is within the purpose, however, for which they, as support and connection points, have been made.

Titles here are meant to suggest a direction of thought without thought being “contained” ichnographically. The titles, works, and statement run free from containment and frames because there is life and great potential for further change and growth. The “articulating” and “articulations” continue.

View this series, Compose Not Decay: Articulating Articulations

This series investigates a world in which time overlaps, and bones are observed as either moving as a joint or assembling to create a single entity. It begins with bones that are moving as a unit and develops into an exploration of how the parts of a joint unite to create a whole. The first few pieces in this body experiment with light radiating from the bones. The titles of these earlier works reflect the movement as a whole. Later works use theatrical light to create a fluid stage upon which the bones can narrate. Their titles initiate contemplation on the selfless accommodation for each other as they unite to form a single joint. Supports for these paintings shift from canvases to rough wood panels with natural texture that parallels the organic bone surface.

These depictions were painted to portray life rather than following the cultural iconography that connects the deadening metaphor of bones to death. Oil color, applied in limited palettes, infers possible vitality in the referent through relation and juxtaposition of value, hue, and saturation. Joints of bones are of interest not only because they are at the physical core of our stability and mechanics but also particular compound subjects which inter-relate. This relation is not solely intimate but free and purposeful. A narrative is formed as these joints, which are incomplete, assemble and interact in a process of renewal. One bone selflessly gives way as the other advances. Their shapes are formed in order to fit and interact in a beautiful empathy. In the ideal joint, there is a true freedom for its members. The purpose of the joint is support and connection, and this freedom is bounded within that purpose. Due to this infinite uniqueness of action, a perfected communion arises between its members.

View the series, Action, Unification