Episode 26: Steven Assael (United States) - "Questioning Existence" - Swap-Cast with Artist Decoded Podcast Lo-Fi Podcast

Steven Assael was born in New York, New York in 1957.  He attended Pratt Institute and presently teaches at The School of Visual Arts in New York.  Assael balances naturalism with a romanticism that permeates the figures and surroundings of his paintings and drawings.  The focus of his work is the human figure, either individually or in a group, rendered in glowing relief by gentle beams of warm and cool light.  Steven Assael’s classical talents are as rare as they are essential to the diverse art world of the 21st Century.

For online teaching/mentorship please contact Steven at duncanvaleriew@gmail.com

Topics Discussed In This Episode:


Seeking out advantages within painting and connecting with people during quarantine
Separation bringing us together
The intimate process of working with models and how they directly or indirectly affect the painting
Allowing for change within his overall creative vision
Teaching painting over Zoom
What makes a good teacher
The search for finding the right questions to ask
Experience motivating change and providing a renewal of what you want
Creating situations of exploration for oneself
Extracting the right vocabulary while creating
The element of control and power that children express when drawing different objects
Understanding the dynamic of copying a subject while painting, and how that evolves into a deeper exploration of shapes, tone, atmospheres, and the figure itself.
Giving breadth to form
A great work of art being infectious
The nature of romanticism
Working from life being an “inquiry into your own humanness”
The idea of questioning and rebelling within a visual outlook
Human nature
The environment of New York throughout the last forty years, and how it has changed
The importance of theatre and the work of actors
Symmetry and asymmetry, and its importance within artform and observation
“Everything is everything” aproach to life
Learning what to see flowing into learning how to paint
Nature being sporadic, and how we must become “like water” in order to succeed in our strategies in life
A commercialized outlook within the art world
Art becoming entertainment
Faith and doubt
Questioning of spirituality and existenc



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