Steve Coffey – Prairie Inspiration

Alberta-based Steve Coffey represents the full scale of a multidisciplinary artist. He’s been an integral part of the Canadian art and music scene for many years. He has curated travelling exhibitions, created large-scale public sculptures, taught college, and conducted workshops and art residencies. 

Coffey originally practiced metal sculpture but eventually gave in to his love of drawing and representation and was seduced by the immediacy and challenges of oil paint, which he began exploring full time in 1995. His music has received critical acclaim over the course of ten albums to date.

“I have always thought of the prairies as a place loaded with visual intricacies resulting in what has become this lifelong exploration to capture its power on canvas and in song,” Coffey says.

“My paintings are mental snapshots,” Coffey says. “I don’t paint from photographs and I seldom paint plein air. Essentially I’ll see something that strikes me, file it away in my head and draw on it in my studio. These mental files I call ‘Memory Polaroids’.” – from his artist statement, here.

” My work is elemental, with a focus on nature and the forces with which humanity has to contend. I search for a distinctive atmosphere from the immensity and grandeur of the plains to the human mark etched upon it.”

Steve Coffey has a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Regina (1990), a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Calgary (1988) and a Diploma in Art & Design from Red Deer College (1985). 

Steve Coffey’s website, here.

Galleries that represent his work, here.

His music site, here.

Images: Coursey of the artist