Skip Steinworth lives and works in Stillwater, MN, an historic river town on the outskirts of the Twin Cities along the St. Croix River, a designated National Scenic Riverway. His interest in art began very early on; by his mid-teens he was selling work in local galleries. After earning a college art degree in the early 1970's, he and his wife taught art in Melbourne, Australia. They returned to Minnesota and both began careers as full-time studio artists.
For a number of years he produced hand-printed lithographs, drawing images using special grease pencils on prepared limestones which were then etched, inked, and printed from a manually operated press. Gradually, he returned to his first love, pencil drawing, the medium he has worked in exclusively since then.
EDUCATION
1979 MA, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN
1974 BA, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN
1969-70 University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2003 Hackett-Freedman Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2000 Hackett-Freedman Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1999 Evansville Museum of Art, Evansville, IN
1996 Drawings Midwest, Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul, MN
1996 Horwitch Newman Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ
1996 Jerry Soloman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1992 Louis Newman Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA
1990 Louis Newman Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA
1989 Partner’s Gallery, Bethesda, MD
1988 LePoudre Gallery, Collegeville, MN
1984 St. John’s University, Collegeville, MN
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2010 Summertime… , Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco, CA and New York, NY
San Francisco Fine Art Fair , Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Twenty Ten , Jenkins Johnson Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Dallas Art Fair , Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Dallas, TX
2009 Art Miami , Jenkins Johnson Gallery, Miami, FL
On Paper , Jenkins Johnson Gallery, New York, NY and San Francisco, CA
2007 The Object Project , Evansville Museum of Arts, History & Science, Evansville, IN: Traveling to:
Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; Hunter
Museum of Art, Chattanooga, TN; Museum of Outdoor Art, Englewood, CO
Representation , Jenkins Johnson Gallery, New York, NY and San Francisco, CA
2005 The 10th National Drawing Invitational , Townsend Wolfe Gallery
2001 Re-Presenting Representation V , Arnot Art Museum, Elmira, NY
2001 Re-Presenting Representation: Contemporary Realist Art from Around the World , The Corning
Gallery at Steuben, New York NY
2000 Still Lifes from Hackett-Freedman Gallery , Spanierman Gallery, New York, NY
1998 Observed Facts: New Realism , Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, TX
1998 A View from Within: Still Life and Interiors , Sydne Bernard Fine Arts, Los Angeles, CA
1997 Paperworks , MB Modern Gallery, New York, NY
1996 About American Realism: Part I , Horwitch Newman Gallery, Scottsdale, AZ
1995 Realism’95 , Parkersburg Art Center, Parkersburg, WV
1994 20th Century Figurative Drawings , Forum Gallery, New York, NY
1993 The Real Thing , Louis Newman Gallery, Beverly Hills, CA
1982 Chautauqua National Exhibition of American Art , Chautauqua, NY
1982 Works on Paper , University of Wisconsin, Superior, WI
1981 National Show , Terrance Gallery, Hudson, NY
1981 Northern Lights , Lakewood Community College, St. Paul, MN
1981 62nd National Exhibition , George Walter Vincent Smith Museum, Springfield, IL
1980 Red River National , Plains Museum, Moorhead, MN
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
Minneapolis Art Institute, Minneapolis, MN
Cargill Corporation, Minneapolis, MN
Springfield Civic Collection, Springfield, IL
Mayer, Brown and Platt, Washington, DC
Dorsey and Whitney, Minneapolis, MN
Kemper Insurance, Chicago, IL
City of Winter Park, FL
Josten’s, Minneapolis, MN
The Richard and Jalane Davidson Collection, Chicago, IL
The Howard Tullman Collection, Chicago, IL
Plains Museum, Moorhead, MN
Marshfield Medical Clinic, West Bend, WI
St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN
University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND
Sagamon State University, Houston, TX
Enron Corporation, Houston, TX
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
2003 Skip Steinworth: Recent Drawings , Hackett-Freedman Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2001 Gangelhoff, Bonnie, “The Art of Drawing: Skip Steinworth,” Southwest Art , February
2000 Skip Steinworth: Recent Drawings , Hackett-Freedman Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1998 Lasarow, Bill, “Skip Steinworth,” ArtScene , May
1995 Gimelson, Deborah, “Contemporary Realist Drawings,” Architectural Digest , July
1994 Drawing Highlights , American Artist
1992 Art and Antiques , December
Journal of the Print World , Vol. 15, No. 4, Fall
1989 Goldman, Betsy, “Skip Steinworth,” American Artist , June
1984 Twin Cities Magazine , June
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t making drawings. Some of my earliest memories are from family summer vacations at my parent’s friends’ lake cabin, watching my father sketch the dock or the boat house or the potbellied stove. To me, it seemed like magic; I wanted to be able to do it myself. For most of my more than 35-year-career as a professional artist, I've created works almost exclusively in graphite pencil. The medium has always had a fundamental appeal for me. It’s direct and uncomplicated. As such, it is well suited to my sensibility and to my imagery, style, and working methods, all of which are equally straightforward.
My work is representational, which to me means more than achieving a pictorial illusion. It is an investigation of our perceptions of the seeable world, an effort to determine what makes things visually "tick", and to understand what exactly it is that allows us to make sense of what we see. It is an attempt to comprehend and reveal the nature of the interactions of light, space, and form. The process consists of mentally deconstructing, analyzing and distilling a visual essence of the subject which is then "re-presented" to the viewer.
Still-lifes have been my primary subject matter. The objects in these arrangements are generally commonplace but are also chosen because of a timeless, almost generic quality I feel they possess. I've purposely composed them to be neither time nor place-specific, including only slight, often incongruous, hints of their contemporaneity or significance to me as the artist. Similarly, my landscapes offer no reference to a particular time or place, although their precision and detail suggest an actual location.
Despite their simplicity and lack of context (or perhaps because of it) they create intriguing and evocative images. If anything, they are perhaps simply suggestive of the quietude and contemplative environment in which they were created.