Bradley Stevens’ lifelong interest in light is demonstrated in this exhibition of landscape and cityscape paintings.  It is the temporal qualities of life––sunlight raking across a field, the hubbub of a city bus stop, or quiet meditation in an art museum­­––that the artist seeks in his travels through France, rural Virginia, and the Western United States.  Stevens explains, “I try to capture a certain quality of light that conveys the mood and spirit of a particular place.  I don’t paint generic landscapes.  Every place has its own qualities and characteristics unique to that specific location, in the same way we think of no two people being alike.  It is the essence that interests me.”

 

     Stevens is also acutely aware of the role light has played in the long tradition of American landscape painting.  To that end, he has recently completed a series of paintings, entitled “Museum Studies” that pays tribute to the great museums, artists, and paintings that have inspired him over the years.  These works play on the geometry of the architectural interiors, leading the viewer into rooms within rooms and paintings within a painting, reminiscent of Shakespeare’s notion of a play within a play.  The “Museum Studies” paintings are also autobiographical, reflecting the many years Stevens spent copying paintings at the National Gallery of Art as part of his education.

 

     Bradley Stevens, a resident of Northern Virginia, has gained a reputation as one of America’s leading realist painters during his career of over thirty years.  His mastery of color, composition, and brushwork is rooted in his classical training; but his penetrating eye gives his paintings a modern twist. Stevens is unique among his contemporaries for his exceptional achievements in three domains of representational art:  portraiture, landscapes, and figurative urban landscapes. Stevens’ paintings are in the collections of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, U.S. Senate, U.S. Department of State, U.S. House of Representatives, Mount Vernon, Monticello and the U.S. Embassy in Paris.