Steve Carpenter, painter of world renown is giving back

Steve Carpenter is a graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School, Portland, Oregon. He is an example of when your high school teachers and friends believe you can be an artist to the fullest depth of the word, the seed of the dream can materialize with work and focus. In high school Steve's biggest dream was to be an illustrator like Norman Rockwell which he accomplished early on in his career. He was a commercial artist for Disney as part of a rich art journey taking him to Europe where he was a fine arts painter. Recently he returned back to the United States to give back to the arts by creating a school in New York. Steve says anyone can learn to draw and learn from him by watching a four hour long video on building a portrait.
Below is his painting "Cosmos Dialous I".

Below Steve's teacher, Henry Heine's demonstration from years ago has sharp differences and faint similarities.

"The Mechanical Birds" by Henry Heine was part of his lesson. He showed us a number of examples of cubist painters and talked about the history of science impacting the artists of the early 20th century. Artists learned from science that there were more ways to see. Mr. Heine, also, demonstrated the process at work. He applied the paint with a sprayer and used printing techniques as well as brushes. He demonstrated an energetic attitude and promised us a break through where we would let our hair down, feel freedom, and promised it would be great fun for us when we make a break through where creative expression would flow. During the 60's there was a movement in art education to paint from our own notions and disregard the tradition of representational painting. This philosophy produced practitioners of painting who complain. Many felt misguided because they don't know what they are doing when painting abstracts. During the three years we were with him, Heine gave us an understanding of abstracting the essence and directional guides based on art history in many of his assignments.

Henry Heine somewhere in the cosmos is very proud of Steve. To learn more about Steve click on the links in blue and underlined above.

How my art education at Portland State University has effected my life

"Dawn's Rays Splash Cattail Cove State Park, Arizona"2008,
water media on cotton rag Arches watercolor paper, 14" x 22"
For sale $200

For something like the thirteenth time, I tackled this painting begun March 13 on the pet walking area at Cattail Cove State Park, Arizona. Every session I tried to approach the under painting as a spring board to abstracting from my memory of the early morning sunshine on palo verti. It started out as water soluble crayon and then it was watercolor and now it is acrylic on paper. Today as in the past sessions I was painting my own excitement in returning to Arizona.

Then later in the day I received a news letter from the Portland State University Art Alumni and Friends Committee. In addition to promoting community among the alumni and asking for support in the form of scholarship donations for art students, President Pro Tem James Minden said he will be asking alumni for profiles and he will be particularly interested in how our art education at PSU has effected our lives.

First, I must say I am so grateful for my time with PSU Art Professors. Their examples give me confidence for my intuitive journey. When I am painting and when I participate in community, I have them at my side and I hear their words like they spoke them yesterday. In 1965 Frederick Heidel said "I hope you have a rich development." "Don't make exercises:Make a complete expressive work from every painting. Keep your work for a long time to see your development." Florence Saltzman said, "Painting is a part of my everyday doings. Painting is a language, a way of living." Richard Muller gave his students confidence saying, "You have an aesthetic sense and it is valid." He mentored me in the beginning of the student run White Gallery and instilled the idea that an artist is a citizen making bridges to other disciplines and the community. Professor Ray Grimm gave me an appreciation of ceramic craft as being a true art form where artists can have a very rich development. Dr. Kimbrell taught that through history there were two kinds of painters - one based their forms on drawing and the other type made form by a painterly use of color. I aspire to be painterly. Thank you Dr. Kimbrell I can weather criticism that doesn't understand or accept painterly work. Professor Glasier of Basic Design made me think of the many possible ways to be expressive artfully. We talked about how we moved from point to point in our daily tasks and at play. We could understand living movements as an art form. I am greatful to Colescott for his social consciousness and search for his roots which I appreciated very much when I found my own roots. Colescott's energy in setting assignments for figure painting was my guide in facilitating a figure drawing group in Bellingham meeting over a 17 year period - the group continues two decades after my leaving. Prasch was caring and made me feel my work was important. Frederic Littman was like a monk in that he lived with the bare essentials. More and more I do away with material frills in my life to keep on painting. He said, "When we have started a piece with a model and the model is nolonger before us then the truely creative part of making art may begin." Whether I start with a model or paint outdoors I am aware of these two chapters in my creative process.

In Muller's class we wrote a paper about our involvement in an art object. I found this project so rewarding to my understanding that I have self-published for my family another involvement in another family art object. I have made many observations connecting our vase to world history sharing art ideas and how we as a family have and are making a small step towards healing and peace.

When I was at Portland State the art faculty had taken to heart the words of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. "If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision where ever it takes him." At Portland State JFK's words meant learning to make goals for our work and not the undisciplined "Laissez Faire" typical of some other schools of that period. When JFK was assassinated Muller was a little late to class. He passed out our papers on our involvement in an art form and expressed in a few words how shaken he was over Kennedy's being shot. He worried about what this event would mean to higher education. And of course art would become a lower priority.

I was lucky to receive instruction at Portland State College when the future for art and its importance was strong. Portland State College, not yet a University at that time, just started its first graduate school - the School of Social Work. The Dean of Social Work, Dr. Gordon Hearn, was also a watercolorist and he understood the wholeness of our being needed art to be complete. His art major daughter gave me an almost unused sketch book of Gordon's which I use.

When I was a caregiver for my mother, art was the bridge that connected us in our daily practice of making a painting. Art can play a significant roll in the aging process and really a miracle that goes unnoticed too much of the time. I am designing art for the last stages of life.

Posting art on the Internet is a bridge for meeting and making friends all over the world. It is a bridge to making connections in my own personal seeing and thinking. Thank you Portland State University Art Department.