Michael Stehr
“UnPedestrian”
“New figure studies celebrating the noteworthy in the common passerby” is the theme for Michael Stehr’s “UnPedestrian,” an exhibit of 33 new paintings on exhibit this month at the artist’s own studio in Oakland, California. A graduate of Stanford University with a degree in Art History, Stehr found he wasn’t satisfied with merely studying fine art, but aspired to become a painter himself. To that end, he embarked on a decorative arts career, painting murals and hand-applied decorations for home interiors using historically accurate techniques, and simultaneously pursuing his dream of creating fine art.
Now an acclaimed painter, the largely self-taught Stehr is drawn to California landscapes and the architecture of European cities as his favorite subjects. His oil paintings show the influences of early California landscape painters such as Thomas Hill and Edgar Payne, and the French painter Camille Corot, a forefather of Impressionism, but still maintain an original style that is definitely Stehr’s own.
His latest work is unusual in that it includes figurative paintings. Typically, he presents an unpopulated landscape, an approach he describes on his Web site as “I want viewers to feel quiet, calm, and pleasantly alone within a painting: the picture frame marking a place that through the eye, even if only for a passing moment, one can slow down the pace of life and quiet the din of the day to day routine. For me, this is a successful painting.”
Hanson Digital has long worked with Michael Stehr on reproductions of his fine art, creating 4×5 transparencies, reproduction-quality drum scans, and gicleé canvas prints of his work. Many of these reproductions are offered for sale on the artist’s Web site.
“UnPedestrian” opens on Saturday, October 31, at Garden Studio, 6032 Monroe Avenue, Oakland, CA, and continues on Sunday, November 1, from 10 am to 4:30 pm. The show is also open the following Sunday, November 8, from 10 am to 4:30 pm.
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Michael Stehr Fine Art