Steven Hook

Medium: Painting

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Steven Hook has often supported himself by working in construction. Once, he was laying flooring adhesive and became entranced by the feel of applying it with a trowel. The motion, the texture. It was a rush. Naturally it inspired some paintings.

Hook does art like addicts do drugs, but art for him is way more than some stimulant. It’s closer to a religion. As believers find true life in faith, Hook’s purpose and spirit are inseparable from his paints. He is an inventive abstract expressionist, but his specialty are his portraits. Many are close-ups of faces. Body parts are exaggerated or misshapen. A signature feature is hands and feet with more than five digits. Lips are bulbous. Colors are complex and outrageous. A tension between humor and pathos animates a viewer’s reaction to the paintings.

Paintings can be judged by the degree to which an artist has mastered his craft and fulfilled his vision. It’s not an exact metric, but measurements are registered as more or less aesthetic confidence and technical agility. Hook’s work, even at its most playful and especially at its most serious, has all the hallmarks of expert execution. You feel you’re in the presence of precise expression.

Excerpted from Boulder Daily Camera, June 18, 2012 | Written by Quentin Young