Art & Life with Stephen Coyle

Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephen Coyle.

Stephen, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I was born and raised in Maynard Massachusetts. In 1976, after two years of college, I purchase a one-way bus ticket to Los Angeles. After three days and nights traveling across the country I arrived at the bus terminal in Downtown Los Angeles at the delightful hour of 3a.m. I didn’t have a place to stay and I didn’t know a soul. Once the sun rose I grabbed and cab and said “take me to the Y”. He offered me the choice of downtown or Hollywood of course I chose Hollywood.
For the next year and a half I took acting and singing lessons in addition I tried my hand at writing. I sucked at all three. One night I was walking down Sunset Blvd and I saw a sign that read, painting and drawing lessons. My inner voice said “Ah I could do that”. It was at the age of 22 that I began to draw and then soon after paint. It was also the first time I visited an art museum.
After the first class I knew this was what I was looking for. I took those classes for six months and the rest was on my own. I had some very early luck. My eighth painting was a copy of a Claude Monet. The set designer for The Merv Griffin Show saw it and purchased it for the set. I got to see that painting for three years.
An interesting side note. After I had been painting for a while my parents informed that my first-grade teacher came to our house and tried to convince them to send me to art school in Worcester. Alas there wasn’t any money or a way to get me there.

Can you give our readers some background on your art?
My philosophy regarding my art is simple. Walk through life with your eyes wide open. Find the poetry in the ordinary and turn it into the extraordinary. I have painted toilets, tubs, sinks, phones on beds, tables, freeways, Beanie Babies, my daughter’s toys, red wagons, inflatable pools, street scenes etc. Anything is fodder for art.

Currently I’ve been focusing on people at the beach. Some of the beach paintings have over ninety people in them. It’s the one place where you can get a large group of nearly naked people together. The beach paintings are an examination of us as we walk, crawl, run, crouch and lie upon the earth. The beach is humanity’s ant hill. It’s the one place where we are stripped of our social markings.

I know the paintings are done when I can hear the murmur of conversation and the sound of the ocean. The beach paintings are mostly from Marconi Beach on Cape Cod. It’s the one place where you can get an aerial perspective. I’ll go there with my family and spend the day shooting and watching the sun travel through the sky.

Any advice for aspiring or new artists?
Advice for other artists, hmm. The only way to survive as an artist is by keeping your overhead very low. Watch your expenditures. Work every day. Patience, I didn’t have my first solo gallery show until I was 39.

I used to tape my rejections letters to my studio wall. I kept thinking that there must be some way to turn these into a positive. Once I had taped up three years of rejections I noticed that I was applying to the same galleries year after year. It occurred to me that I should photocopy the latest rejection and send it in with the new work saying “this is what you thought last year what you think now”. It actually made a difference. I use this to make the point that any negative can be turned into a positive.

What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
I’m very lucky that I’m with two very good galleries. Quidley and Company Gallery on the East Coast. They have exhibition spaces in Boston, Nantucket, Westport Connecticut, and Naples Florida.

The Paul Thiebaud Gallery in San Francisco California covers the West Coast.I’ve just been approached by a gallery in the Netherlands about representation. Hopefully Europe will be covered by next year.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.quidleyandco.com, www.paulthiebaudgallery.com
• Instagram: Instagram: stephencoyleart

Image Credit:
Lori Frances Coyle

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