Artist Statement
Steve Potter is fascinated with the logos on beer bottle caps, wine bottle labels, coins — anything containing a simple, strong image. His paintings are strewn with such icon-like images, portrayed using a palette of fauve, opaque colours. The subject matter of his paintings — trees, flowers, human figures — is incidental, merely a framework on which to suspend shape and colour. Steve’s challenge is to stitch together small instances of shape and colour, little pictures in their own right, to achieve that pleasing oneness one recognizes as a painting
Four distinctive series are presented in Steve Potter’s collection: enigmatic figurative works; loose, dreamy landscapes with abstracted forms; highly intricate ‘mosaic’ works; and pure abstracts with a mid-century flair.
Artist Bio
In 1990, when Steve Potter began to paint seriously, he wryly referred to his work as “paintings in the dark”, as his demanding “real” job would only afford him time to paint from 10 PM until the wee hours of the morning. Countless solitary nights were spent in a small apartment in front of his easel, paper pallet on the low stool at his knee and an antique candelabra lamp blazing over his shoulder. Steve kept to this vampiric schedule until 2017, when he was able to switch to painting full time.
