Steve Allrich

 Artist Steve Allrich paints expressive landscapes using dramatic color and textured layers to evoke a powerful sense of place. In his most recent work he maintains a fresh and spontaneous approach, gravitating to the subject matter and the particular light of Cape Cod. A graduate of the American Academy of Art in Chicago, Steve studied with artist Eugene Hall, painting figures and portraits directly from life, and interiors and landscapes on location. From The Copley Society of Boston to Canyon Road in Santa Fe, Allrich has exhibited his work in solo shows as well as invitational and juried exhibitions, and garnered dozens of awards.

Steve was featured on Boston Channel 5's Chronicle: Cape Light. His book, Oil Painting for the Serious Beginner has sold over 50,000 copies.

Allrich is also a screenwriter, penning several films, most recently 2020's Honest Thief, starring Liam Neeson, which spent several weeks as the number-one movie in the U.S.

Publications

Cape Cod Life “Clinging to the Light” (Nov/Dec 2024)
Oil Painting for the Serious Beginner (Watson-Guptill, 1996)

Artist’s Statement

I love to paint. I love putting a brush stroke or swipe of a palette knife on a canvas, manipulating it into another and seeing what happens; I love the fact that it's unpredictable, that what worked yesterday may not work today; I love to search for and paint patterns of light and shadow on almost anything: a dead tree laying in tall grass, an ocher dune set against a cerulean sky,  a path meandering through a stand of pines.

I like being an artist. I like not having a job. I like waking up in the morning and not knowing exactly what the day holds for me. I like being my own boss. I especially like being in a position where no one tells me what do (in theory, anyway).

When I was just starting out as a painter, I spent a lot of time trying to convince people that painting was my job: my parents, when they wondered where they had gone wrong; friends, who would exchange knowing glances and murmur, “I always knew he was a little odd”; even complete strangers routinely questioned the validity (not to mention the sanity) of my decision to try to paint for a living. In retrospect, I don’t blame any of them for being suspect; I cringe when I look back at how dismal my prospects were at the time.

But as I’ve become more accustomed to the notion that one can indeed make a living from art, I’ve become equally determined not to think of it as a job. As something I have to do. It’s important for me to keep the fun in it. Because once it ceases to be fun, I’m going to be long gone and hard to find.

Speaking of making a living as a painter, it ain’t easy. There are as many reasons for this as there are stars in the sky (well, maybe not quite that many), but I had an experience over 30 years ago that I believe gets to the heart of the matter.

I had set up my easel on a country road in Vermont, in front of a small, picturesque farm. My subject: dappled light on a derelict, old flatbed truck parked in a sea of weeds, with a decrepit barn behind it (I love painting broken-down shit. Paging Dr. Freud...).

While I was painting, a farmer (the owner of said farm) drove by on a tractor, hauling manure (draw your own conclusions). We nodded warily at one another, and he chugged by without a word. He subsequently drove past me at least a dozen times as I painted and never said a word, although I did catch him glancing suspiciously at my painting once or twice as he passed by.

I finished, and as I was packing up to leave, he drove up, shut off his tractor and asked to see the painting. He liked it (to our mutual surprise) and asked how much I wanted for it. I thought for a moment, and then quoted him a dirt-cheap price. After all, he’d been nice enough not to shoot me; and I figured that if I could leave with enough cash to fill the car with gas, buy lunch, and put a down payment on a tube of Cadmium Yellow Light, I’d be happy as a clam.

When he heard the price, the farmer looked at me like I’d just questioned the virtue of his only daughter. He snorted in disgust, hacked a slimy, brown wad of chaw on the pavement and said, “Hell, I could buy a pig for that.” Then he started up his tractor and drove away.