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