Steve Pearson

• Professor of Art

I am Professor of Studio Art and Chair of the Art Department, where I have been teaching studio art courses since 2004. Since 2005, I have served as Director of the College’s Esther Prangley Rice Gallery, an exhibition space for McDaniel students and other emerging contemporary artists from the Mid-Atlantic region and beyond.

I was born in Johnstown, NY. Upon graduation from high school, I served honorably in the United States Navy. I then received my Bachelor of Science in studio art from The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY, and my Master of Fine Arts in painting from the Leroy E. Hoffberger School of Painting at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD.

During my training at both the undergraduate and graduate level, my work focused primarily on narrative figuration. After graduation, I painted still lifes, investigating the formal and conceptual nature of everyday objects. By appropriating formal compositional devices explored by modern and contemporary artists such as Kazimir Malevich, Ad Reinhardt, Donald Judd, and Jules Olitski, I constructed still lifes using commonplace objects, including cardboard boxes and paper lunch bags.

While I was a resident at the Vermont Studio Center in 2003, my work became increasingly abstract, while remaining committed to exploring the still life genre. During a residency at the Ragdale Foundation in Illinois in 2005, my work further evolved to become, essentially, nonobjective. Throughout the various shifts in my painting styles, order and structure provide the connecting thread in my development, echoing my early experiences in the Navy.