Steve Singer Bio

Steve Singer is a Jersey City based painter and sculptor. He studied at The New York Studio School (1972), The Art Students League in NY (1972), Graduated Magna Cum Laude with a BA from Dartmouth College, NH (1973), and attended the Sir John Cass School of Art in London, England (1979-84).

Singer has shown in numerous solo exhibitions including HOUSE in London England; Denise Bibro Gallery and Bernice Steinbaum Gallery in NY; and Drawing Rooms and Chamot Gallery in Jersey City. His sculpture commissions include "Longshoreman" in Jersey City, "Camouflaged Heron" in Atlantic City; and public sculpture installations at Dartmouth College and Columbus Circle in Manhattan. Singer's work has been featured and reviewed in many important outlets including Art In America, The New York Times, Architectural Digest, Sculpture Review and Art News. Due to the outstanding quality of his work, he has been the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the coveted Pollock-Krasner Award.

About the exhibition:

Steve Singer is a painter's painter and an art or image appreciator's painter in equal standing. His work is as much about the act of making an image, how the materials interact, and how he responds to his chosen location. There is also the tradition of the artist making a great landscape painting at work here. Singer's paintings would hold their own in an exhibition alongside watercolors by John Singer Sargent, Milton Avery and Winslow Homer. He is that quality of a serious painter.

With the level of Singer's skill, observation and energy, the work does not require an arts knowledge to appreciate, but those with a deeper understanding of art will certainly appreciate how deftly he handles temperamental water media. He may do 10 variations of the same view such as nearby Paterson Falls, with each painting having its own identity by offering something else that the artist sees. Singer also sees beauty in areas that most would not, such as capturing the view in his painting, "Marina, Jersey City". In his artist statement, Singer writes:

"I came to seek out demolition/construction sites, urban parks, desolate abandoned places as subject matter for my en plein-air watercolors after decades of foraging around in such locations for scrap steel to make sculptures.

At first, these places yielded half-submerged raw materials. Gradually, the echoes and evocations from these sites assumed this vast beauty and also a sense of loss, all of which I needed to capture in art."

Singer's resulting images are fresh interpretations that capture some well-known and lesser known areas. His paintings of the Brooklyn Bridge and of Big Sur are as iconic as you can possibly get.

The title of the show, "An Artist's View: Observations in Watercolor," was chosen as it places the emphasis thematically on how Steve Singer paints, keeping the focus on the artist's process and the resulting outstanding paintings. Viewers are reminded that these paintings are about the artist's intent, as much as the paintings depict near and far locales.

-Anne Novado, Curator/Director