Steven Nederveen
Curriculum Vitae
Artist Profile
Steven Nederveen studied fine art at Medicine Hat College and went on to receive a Bachelor of Design from the University of Alberta in 1995. The following year he moved to Vancouver (1996-2000) where Steven practiced meditation and found that this experience combined with the beauty of the landscape greatly contributed to his growth as a person and an artist. It was these moments that lead Steven to use painting to draw connections between our natural environment and aspects of spirituality. By blurring the lines between photography and painting, he develops a magical realism that inspires us to see the world with new eyes. By using distressing and aging the work he creates the sense of past and present, of struggle and transformation. A glass-like layer of resin coats each painting enhancing the clarity of the image and reflecting the viewer into the work.
Steven's work is featured internationally in galleries, art fairs, interior design shows, magazines and many private collections. Steven Nederveen currently lives in London, England.
Technique
The finished artworks are a mix of photography, computer editing and painting. I take all my own photographs, edit them together with software, often creating imaginary landscapes. They are then printed as large Chromira prints, a light based print on photo paper. I then continue a second stage of editing where I paint and etch into the printed image. This is where the unique characteristics in the image are enhanced and the rawness of paint offsets the perfection of photography. As a last stage, the artwork is sealed in epoxy resin, which enhances colours and adds a dreamlike veil over the image supporting the illusion of
a magical realism.
Description of Work
Imbued with an aura of mystery, Steve Nederveen`s paintings develop scenarios of nature that are imaginative. These paintings, with their depictions of nature, and vistas have a deep, atmospheric character. They suggest a rebirth of classicism, or antiquity... the sense of mystery borders on narrative, or fantasy. As with Nederveen`s earlier paintings there are mystic symbolist elements that weave their way into the atmospheres. The birds look ominous, like a portent of some future event.
Nederveen`s dark, atmospheric paintings conjure up a sense that these are places associated with a generalized vision of what nature is or could be. And so whether these are real places that Nevedeen paints, is not relevant for these works develop an aesthetic out of the absence of context, and it is precisely this fictional, representational basis that becomes a point of interest. A landscape becomes a mindscape, a metaphor for an inner state of being and Nederveen builds them gesturally, with a painter`s eye for what associative cues we might respond to then build a visual meaning, an interpretation. A spiritual value is thus established through the intriguing cues and elements set into these scenes. We search for a meaning amid the cues, only to discover the meaning is in the message, the message is the medium. It is our interpretation, our intuited sense of what a landscape is, or can, represent that brings its own meaning to these scenes. If there can be an emptiness, there can also be a spiritual message within all this.
Atmospheric effects, surface markings, alert us to the illusionary nature of these paintings. We are in a non-space, a meditative place where images of nature, or animals, birds, exist as links to an illusory life…As landscapes of the imagination, they challenge the notion of originality, and reproduce sensations of nature. The surface effects in these paintings establish a secondary motif that has to do with pure painterliness. These surface textures, markings, are about painting in and of itself and not the subjects painted – the landscape content.
Extracted texts from Steven Nederveen: Divine Re-Creation(s) by John K. Grande