Karl Stephan's Page

My Role

Artist

My Discipline(s)

Music, Visual Arts, Literary Arts

About Me And My Work

BIOGRAPHY: Born a U.S. citizen in Morocco in 1958, painter Karl Stephan also edited and illustrated Garage Noir, the collaborative e-zine of art, music and the creative process. Garage Noir ended publication in June 2009, but Karl still paints. Karl resumed painting in 2004, more than 20 years after receiving his BFA from "tiny" Guilford College in North Carolina. His first one-man show “March Madness” was held in Connecticut in 2008. Studying under noted artist and educator Roy Nydorf, Karl attended master classes at Guilford with printmaker Gabor Peterdi, painters William Bailey and Yvonne Jacquette and the satirical Soviet creative team of Komar and Melamid. Bill Bailey was not impressed but Ms. Jacquette singled out Karl's work as “powerful.” More recent opinions range from "anachronistic" to "zany." Karl has participated in numerous group shows and is represented in private collections from Boston to San Francisco. In 2007 two of his paintings were selected for display by Cheryl Brutvan, then Curator of Contemporary Art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. A member of Connecticut's Libertine Collective and other artist’s groups, Karl shows his work regularly at leading alternative art spaces, and irregularly everywhere else. Karl credits himself with painting the finest Ford V-8 in Western Art. In fact by concentrating his work on overlooked items of American ephemera (gas cans, wiffle balls, ignition coils, hand-pump blowtorches, etc.) he finds he can make similar claims frequently, without fear of contradiction.

Art Forms And Cultures I Would Like To Engage With

Any that emphasize our shared humanity and responsibility for one another while allowing us room to laugh at ourselves. ARTIST'S STATEMENT: “I want to squeeze something spiritual out of the materiality of American life - a laugh at least. In my paintings I present familiar household objects drawn life-sized, sometimes from memory. Contrasting jewel-toned colors energize novel compositions…or that’s the idea anyway. I hope you enjoy my work.”

My Creative Influences & Favorite Artists

I'm versed in the canon of visual art from cave paintings to Banksy. From that I've distilled an original visual vernacular which echoes many of the strongest threads of art as an integral function of human society. I'm also very interested in the influence of music on visual art.

My Artistic Affiliations

New Haven Art Space, Hartford Art Space, MAC 650, Hygenic Arts, Middletown Artists Collective, MANIAC, The Libertine Collective

My Web link

http://www.myspace.com/garagenoir