Ryan Steuerman (b. 2002) is a painter from Queens, New York. He graduated with a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and spent Spring 2023 studying at the Chelsea College of Arts in London. His paintings use acrylics and pigments on water-steeped raw canvas to achieve ethereal, organic arrangements. He is interested in using abstraction and process-based art to explore the beauty and complexity of change in the human experience.
CONTACT:
Email: steuerman.ryan@gmail.com
Instagram: @Ryfromthestudio
Artist Statement:
My studio practice has become a way to meditate on the nature of change in my life. To be alive is to be caught in an endless nebulous cascade of transformations and evolutions. When I feel completely engulfed in a cosmos of change, I am inclined to struggle. It is frightening to be free-floating, pulled to and fro by forces beyond myself. I tend to grasp for anything seemingly stable, a nexus, a safety net. More often than not, such points of security turn out to be as transient as the rest. I have spent most of my life struggling against this current, fearful of change, always clinging to people, places, and moments in time.
Through process-based painting, I find wonder and excitement in unpredictable physical creations. I go to the studio every day; and each time I make a painting in one sitting. It is devotional, like a daily ritual of worship at the altar of painting itself. A repeated form tethers every painting; an organic yet mystical, undulating, spine-like shape that passes through it. I paint this form again and again, with fluid acrylics and pigments, often on raw canvas soaked in water. It is a heavily physical process, using brushes, sponges, and my own body to apply paint. The results are based significantly in chance, due to the wet-on-wet technique. Once a piece dries, I do not return to it. Through this process, I find a balance, a sort of dance, between deliberate action and the agency of the medium itself. I forfeit the need to overly control the work, as each piece will grow and shift even after I walk away.
The image is far less important than the repeated act of creating. In this act, like a daily journal entry, each painting becomes an imprint of my experiences and emotions of that moment. Regardless of what emotional state I am in, or any external circumstances, these factors infuse and transform the work. The form may become enshrouded in layers of hazy stains, obscured, or a portion may be washed away completely, revealing the textures of the surrounding space. I can change any variable, but the form is always there in some capacity, containing boundless beauty and emotional complexity. Just as one may be when they adapt and evolve, not resist, change.
Through process-based painting, I find wonder and excitement in unpredictable physical creations. I go to the studio every day; and each time I make a painting in one sitting. It is devotional, like a daily ritual of worship at the altar of painting itself. A repeated form tethers every painting; an organic yet mystical, undulating, spine-like shape that passes through it. I paint this form again and again, with fluid acrylics and pigments, often on raw canvas soaked in water. It is a heavily physical process, using brushes, sponges, and my own body to apply paint. The results are based significantly in chance, due to the wet-on-wet technique. Once a piece dries, I do not return to it. Through this process, I find a balance, a sort of dance, between deliberate action and the agency of the medium itself. I forfeit the need to overly control the work, as each piece will grow and shift even after I walk away.
The image is far less important than the repeated act of creating. In this act, like a daily journal entry, each painting becomes an imprint of my experiences and emotions of that moment. Regardless of what emotional state I am in, or any external circumstances, these factors infuse and transform the work. The form may become enshrouded in layers of hazy stains, obscured, or a portion may be washed away completely, revealing the textures of the surrounding space. I can change any variable, but the form is always there in some capacity, containing boundless beauty and emotional complexity. Just as one may be when they adapt and evolve, not resist, change.