Steve Sweetser Artist's Statement
Throughout his life Steve Sweetser has incorporated art into his world. Even during his 40-year career as a Veterinarian, his Veterinary Clinic in Sacramento, had a revolving exhibition of animal art. Now that he has retired from Veterinary Medicine, he is concentrating on themes that have been developing over the past 30 years. His current interest is mixed media abstract and collage. Because of his interest in art history and specific artists, such as Warhol, Magritte, Dali, Kandinsky, David Hockney, Henri Léger, he integrates classic images with more modern concepts. His recent mixed media work, Facing East and the Samyn Series as well as many of the collage pieces, start with a geometric component to fit together in a color palate, that then evolve into a final design. He uses Chinese Characters in the Facing East series. He simply like the characters as design elements. He is not telling any story with the Chinese writing. He employs layers of various papers with different textures, which give the piece a 3 dimensional quality, where the text elements percolate from the background.
The Countenance and Wagnerian Opera Heroins Series reveals an abstraction of a human presence, giving a portrait of a specific attitude, yet a mystery of meaning. He doesn't necessarily tell a story with his art, that is up to the observer.
As Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to."
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