(Click here to view artwork)
Steven Homsher was born in 1960 in rural eastern Pennsylvania. He began formal art training at the age of 16 in the studio of master figure artist Jacques Fabert. He completed 4 years of study at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he was awarded prizes for drawing. Upon graduation in 1982, Homsher traveled and studied painting in Europe. He then returned to Pennsylvania to study figure painting for several more years with mentor Fabert.
Intense love of the outdoors eventually drew Homsher away from urban life and figurative studio work to plein air landscape painting. The first few years were devoted to watercolor, then changing to oils, which provide a broader range of textural opportunities. A relocation to Colorado in 1995 offered vast open spaces and an abundant variety of cloud formations, which are an unending source of enchantment for him.
In 2002 Homsher lived and painted at the Fundacio Corbero, an art foundation in Barcelona Spain. There he began painting larger studio works of Colorado landscapes, in addition to painting outdoors. The last year has seen a shift in focus to working in the mountains near Nederland, where he is establishing a new studio and residence.
"As much as it sounds appealing, I am not much of a "travel painter". I am drawn to painting the environment where I live, the places where I have developed a calm resonance, a knowing of that place. This enables me to enter a contemplative state of mind that is the source and purpose of the work.
I believe my painting is more successful to the degree that "I" get out of the way and serve as an instrument through which the clouds, the trees, and the fields may have a voice of elegant simplicity.
The model for this way of working is succinctly stated in a Sufi saying, passed on to me by my mentor: 'Sell your cleverness, buy bewilderment.'"