FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Zenith Gallery Presents:
Museum Studies II: Honoring the Female Perspective
Paintings by Bradley Stevens
Exhibit Dates: December 7, 2018 –February 2, 2019
Artist Talk at 3pm Saturday January 12, 2019
1429 Iris Street NW, Washington DC 20012
In this new series of paintings, Bradley Stevens honors the artists who have influenced him and the museum goers––in this case, all women––whom he sees as the vanguard of art, culture,and progress in these times.
By returning to his theme of museum interiors, Stevens relives his student years copying Master paintings at the National Gallery of Art and implements the lessons these artists have taught him. With his mastery of color, composition,and gesture, he lures us into the gallery and creates the intimacy of experiencing art.
Inspired by the resurgence of the women’s movement, he has chosen to feature women as advocates of these hallowed museum spaces.Their poses and expressions reveal complete captivation with and immersion in the art, such that the physical and psychological act of “looking” is the subject. Stevens’ introspective museum studies are a meditation on the enduring power of art to educate, inspire and transcend, and on women’s leadership to protect its place in our society.
In his career of over 35 years, Bradley Stevens has forged a reputation as one of America’s leading realist painters. His style is contemporary realism, rooted in classical training yet boldly depicting the modern world with his penetrating eye. Stevens is unique among his peers for his exceptional achievements in three domains of representational art: portraits, landscapes, figurative city-scapes, and interiors. He skillfully combines these genres in his work, creating contemporary portraits of people and places. Stevens’ paintings are widely collected both privately and publicly throughout the United States, including by the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Department of State, U.S. Embassy in Paris, Monticello, Mount Vernon,and the nation’s preeminent corporations, universities,and hospitals. His portrait subjects are luminaries and leaders in education, business, law, science, philanthropy,and politics. His painting of Vernon E. Jordan Jr.hangs in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery. Other portraits include Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, Governor Mark Warner,and the family of Senator John D. Rockefeller IV. Stevens’ historical painting commemorating the Connecticut Compromise of 1787 adorns the U.S. Senate Reception Room, next to the Senate Chambers in the U.S. Capitol.
