Filigree Magazine
My work is featured in the second issue of Filigree Magazine. Please take a look, there’s some amazing work by talented photographers, designers, makeup artists, and models.
If you’re visiting this site because you learned about my work from Filigree, welcome, and you can see the paintings featured in the issue in the gallery.
I’m working on a new painting series and you can follow me on Twitter or Facebook if you want to know when it can be seen.
Thanks and nice to meet you.
Some recent work
I’m busy working on updates with recaps of all my shows this past year, but in the meantime, here’s a sample of some of my work from the past few months.
Protecting the First Amendment
Update: the auction has ended, with a winning bid of $305.00
Thanks to Neil Gaiman, CBDLF, and everyone who helped to spread the word about the auction including Amanda Palmer, Molly Crabapple, the legendary Stoya, and those of you who retweeted, shared, liked, and +1′d, including my amazing wife Tricia.
Previously:
As an American and an artist I believe in protecting First Amendment rights.
Because of this I’m donating a painting I’ve done of author Neil Gaiman with 100% of the auction winnings going to Comic Book Legal Defense Fund
If the First Amendment is important to you, please help by sharing the link below or making a bid on this auction.
http://bit.ly/NeilPortraitCBLDF
From the auction:
This portrait of author Neil Gaiman is by artist Steve Cleff from a photo provided by the subject.
The painting is watercolor on 18″ x 24″ canvas.
Mr. Gaiman is the New York Times bestselling author of novels, comic books, and films. His notable works include the comic book series The Sandman and novels American Gods, Stardust, Coraline, and The Graveyard Book. Mr. Gaiman’s writing has won numerous awards, including Hugo, Nebula, and Bram Stoker. You can see what Mr. Gaiman is working on and read his blog at: http://www.neilgaiman.com
The artist is donating this painting to help raise awareness for Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, an organization that Mr. Gaiman has actively supported (and the artist believes in).
Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is a non-profit organization dedicated to the protection of the First Amendment rights of the comics art form and its community of retailers, creators, publishers, librarians, and readers. The CBLDF provides legal referrals, representation, advice, assistance, and education in furtherance of these goals. Learn more about how you can help at http://www.cbldf.org
All proceeds from the sale of this painting go directly to CBLDF.
For the duration of the auction, this painting can be seen hanging at the Aktion Gallery, 535 South St. Philadelphia PA 19147 http://www.facebook.com/FallAktionist
Painting ©2011 Stephen Cleff http://www.fluidbeauty.com
New work at Aktion Gallery, Philly PA 6/24 – 7/15
New stuff. Bubbles. Celebrity portrait. More about the celebrity portrait later this week.
Update: Pictures from the opening. It’s a group show and these pics are from a collection of artists, my stuff is the circles.
If you like my work and get a chance, please stop by, because it’s a set of canvases, it works best in person. Please let me know what you think on Twitter or Facebook
Here’s the work. Looks best in person. I’ll send pics from the opening:
Here’s details on the show
NYC
I have a few goals for 2011, sell a t-shirt, do a shoot with my favorite model, make a book of all of last year’s paintings, some projects code-named “colorforms,” “bubbles,” and “the big myth,” paint and donate two celebrity paintings for charity, have a show in New York, and dig deeper, be bolder, and have more fun than last year.
Well, this Thursday 1/13 I’ve got that show in New York. It’s at Niagra Bar 112 Avenue A, at 7th St, in the East Village, right on Tompkins Square park, courtesy of the Antagonist Movement. Read about them, they’re doing good things.
Loyal readers (Trish, Mario, Susan, and Gary) will recall that I planned to take it easy this year. I’m trying. Really.
That’s what I’ve done so far this year. I like painting. I can’t really stop.
Here are the paintings in the show:
It’s easier to paint than write these posts, so I’ll guess at your questions and makes some notes for myself about the show:
- It’s a group show. No idea if there’s a theme.
- I’m showing three pieces, one existing (the tall one), two new (the ovals)
- I chose to make images that pick up where I left off from my April ’10 show
- I wanted to reconnect with my mission: For the women who view my paintings to recognize their own inner beauty
- Picking colors: I pick songs first and they tell me what colors to paint (i have synesthesia)
- I planned to do two paintings. One with colors I’m comfortable with and another with colors I haven’t used before. For the colors I haven’t used before, I chose orange and purple, thinking of the Invisibles). When I was done though, it didn’t seem “Cleff” enough for my debut (first? last? who knows?) show in NYC, so I decided to do a red and purple one. I also realized I wanted to make all three work as a set, so I made the image face to the right to compliment the left-facing blue one. I’ll put them on either side of the large painting
- They’re on canvas. I buy the canvases pre-stretched
- They’re done with watercolor. I have magic primer that lets me paint watercolor on anything
- I don’t remember exactly how large they are, they’re around 12″ x 16″. The large one is 2 feet by 4 feet
- First I drew the under-pictures on standard rectangular canvases then realized I wanted to use the oval canvases because it creates more powerful images
- I’ll probably go and paint the same images on those rectangular canvases too because I love these images and I want to try some looser painting
- While the images are based on pictures of models I worked with, these images aren’t meant to be portraits of specific people, they’re meant to represent aspects of feminine confidence
- I met the models through a site for models and photographers to network. For both models I spent about a year working to fit into their schedules
- The show is only up for one night
- I got the show through networking, responding to requests to show (submitting to one show and attending led to networking which led to submitting for another show. Thanks, Stacy Lynn!)
Feel free to ask me more questions, I usually only get them at shows, not online, but I’m happy to answer them.
Here’s a bonus, a closeup of the image I decided not to use for the show.
Dreams, Death, and Near-death
Thank you for a very good year.
I realized a lot of dreams. I did everything this year I could dream up. This list below is to help future versions of me to remember what happened this year, and see what’s possible.
Dreams
Most importanty, I helped my wife raise our now 14 month-old.
I also landed a job I’d been chasing for two years.
Now for the art stuff.
I had a goal this year to be in a gallery show. This actually came up last year as I was getting prepared to be a dad. I imagined my future son finding a closet full of my paintings, asking me if I had ever done anything with my skills. In an effort to show him by example he could do anything he wants, I decided to get a show.
I wound up in six shows (two solo, four group), and invited to be in four others.
Also to set a good example for my boy, I decided I wanted to start regularly donating portraits of celebrities to charities. To start it off, I was able to donate a painting of a portrait of Amanda Palmer to raise $950 for RAINN.
I also donated another painting to Pinups for Pitbulls and a painted umbrella to raise money for the Philly Mural Arts program.
Because I suspect that my audience has the same budget as me, I wanted to make my art affordable. I got lucky and found a class on photographing artwork and with my friend, photographer Jeff Smith, I was able to make some affordable options for people to get copies of the paintings. These include prints from my paintings, a book of my work, and at the end of the year, I got my work on a t-shirt. Soon you’ll be able to get those if you’re interested. Here’s some of the prints available:
I wound up in a couple of articles this year, one for the City Paper blog, one for City’s Best, and I’ll be in one next year in HAHAMag. I should note that Amber of Amberella gallery got great press for the shows in Livingproof Mag, 5150, and Out of Print mag.
To finish things up, I got hired to storyboard a feature film and illustrate a comicbook for the movie, Sufferance, from Eventide Productions. I’ve wanted to do both of these things for years.
Death
At the beginning of the year, my wife and I took over Dr. Sketchy’s Philly and hosted seven sessions. Including one at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and another with the legendary Stoya as Neil Gaiman‘s Death.
Near-death
I also had viral meningitis and was in September I was in the hospital for three days and in bed for about two weeks. I’m fully recovered, and was able to get in another couple of Dr. Sketchy’s and a show afterwards. Shortly after I got out of the hospital I tried a new style of painting I had thought of, specifically because I knew this new style would test out my brain and I was very pleased with how it turned out. What you see are seven round canvases of various sizes all hung together to make one image. One reason I like it is because it involves the viewer, as your mind has to fill in the blanks. I’ve got about 20 variations of this I want to do next year.
The painting served another purpose too – it was this year’s Halloween painting. You can see the Halloween paintings at MakeitBleed.com. I do the paintings every year for our annual Halloween party. This year’s party evidence:
Finally, I worked on daily sketches again this year. I started in 2006. I drew daily for most of the year, with breaks when I was painting daily and when I was sick. Highlights from the daily sketches:
Thank You
Special thanks to my wife Tricia for making every day a dream come true, to my son Patrick for being the inspiration that got me to do all this stuff this year, to Stoya for being a great friend and muse, to Amber Lynn for letting me have my first solo show, to JL Schnabel and Tanya Dakin for advice. Thanks to Candy Mayhem for helping to run Dr. Sketchy’s Philly and to Miss D’Arcy D’Lux and Little Darling for all of their help with Dr. Sketchy’s Philly. If I got nothing else out of the experience, I got the benefit of meeting you all!
Thanks to everyone who came to my shows and thank you very much to the people who purchased paintings and prints, it means a lot.
Thanks to Gary Irwin for shooting and editing this amazing video:
Thanks to Eventide Productions for hiring me to storyboard and illustrate.
Thanks to Susan and Tom at Comcast for hiring me and to everyone at CIM for dealing with my time out with meningitis.
Thanks also to everyone on Twitter who supported me throughout the year, especially Jamie Berry, Kat Ostrow, Jerry Shawback, Ken Powers, Spyros Heniadis, Warren, and @BlueGumboArt.
Thanks to LisaLou McKnuckles, Michelle Hengeveld, and Sean Saunders for their support. Thanks to the Fall Studios and Tina and Linda at Topstitch for letting me show.
Thanks to Amanda Palmer and her management team, to Chelsea at RAINN, to Neil Gaiman, and to Stoya for helping me to give back. Together we helped 180 people get crisis counseling.
Thanks to Ginger, Leigh, and Lilly at HAHAMag, and to the folks at Paradigm Gallery for helping me raise money for the Mural Arts Program. Thanks to Little Darling for helping me raise awareness for Pitbulls for Pinups.
I love all you guys and you keep me going.
Next year? I have to chill a little. I have some big paintings ideas, we’ll see how many I can get to. Please keep checking.
Here’s the paintings I was able to do this year. Enjoy.
Oh yeah, I tried out using social media to support my paintings. I did sell a painting through twitter and met a lot of cool people. This next picture is my highlight though. I don’t know who these other three people are, but I’ll take being compared to Maynard.
Happy New Year!
Last show of the year. New style
You can still see my new work at the Amberella gallery.
From the opening:
I love the bubbles. It’s a new style I’m going to explore next year.
I’ve got loads of ideas to try.
Because it’s impossible to write a proper post these days with everything going on, here’s a bunch of pictures of the sketches, primer work, and under-paintings for the show paintings.
