Stephen morath artist biography

Stephen Morath – Biographical Info

For over thirty years I have painted scenes from all over the Southwest. My pictures rarely represent an actual place, but rather a place as I think it should be.

They are often nostalgic, sometimes “cartoony”, sometimes quite naturalistic. Mainly I paint northern New Mexico and southern Arizona; but the extremes of my interest range from the frosty peaks of Colorado to the shores of the desert sea in Baja California, and all the wide open spaces in between.

I am drawn not only to the beauties but also the oddities of the Southwest – the outrageous topography, the tourist traps, the honky-tonk strips, the old motel signs, the clash of cultures, the places where Indian America meets the science fiction of the ‘Fifties; as well as the pueblos, the sparkling deserts, the blue ranges, the birds in the morning…I prefer the rural countryside to the unpopulated wilderness, and rarely paint a landscape without some kind of human activit