Stephen Beal Quotes

#1. My studio work is a central part of my life and I'd be at loose ends without it. When I'm not in my studio, I don't stop thinking about painting.

Stephen Beal

#2. Only at the end of the last stroke of paint, you can begin to wonder what needs to be done next.

Stephen Beal

#3. I have, and do sometimes, work with other media. But there is something about the physical activity and the directness of painting that I find fascinating. I am very attracted to the materiality of paintings and the visual phenomena of hue and value.

Stephen Beal

#4. I moved to Chicago and began attending the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The students and teachers I met in Chicago were politically active and also passionate about the same things that I was interested in. It was a great match for me.

Stephen Beal

#5. I am very invested in the physical activity and the decision-making that is involved with making paintings - nothing else is quite like it.

Stephen Beal

#6. I'm interested in how paintings can change or transform - sometimes through close examination or viewed from afar; or how they hold the space of a wall or interact in a room with each other.

Stephen Beal

#7. I enjoy thinking about how paintings can change depending on where they are - how they look in a gallery or in relation to other paintings, or in different rooms. Paintings can change the way we experience and see the world.

Stephen Beal

#8. In the late 60's I was enrolled at Occidental College majoring in philosophy and taking several studio art classes, but I dropped out. It was a very confusing time with the war in Vietnam and the social changes sweeping the nation.

Stephen Beal

#9. The paintings are more about physicality and gesture than meditation. I'd compare it to playing scales on the Cello - each sound (pitch and intensity) depends on the manner in which you hold and apply the bow. The same goes for the gesture of applying paint to a surface.

Stephen Beal