I am a Florida based artist, specializing in classical mediums with newfangled eyes, a contradiction my art tends to reflect. I hope to harness this tension of being a stranger, a man out of time, or a fish out of water who must embrace modernity.

Raised in California, a bittersweet upbringing, I was left with ambition and a lust for the luxury I was denied. At University I studied history and have steadily hoped to evolve more and more into my ideal. In hoping to refine myself, all the opposing ideas became that much more acute to me: the feral and the civilized, wealth and poverty, elegance and ugliness, yesterday and tomorrow.

Hence, my foremost intention as an artist is to depict a world of discrepancies, of paradoxes, and conflict by tossing seemingly contradictory motifs or styles together⁠—marrying the old with the new.

By juxtaposing subject matter and color palettes and not sinking into a formula, I hope to make provocative and immortal pieces. Even sketching up an old haggard man, I want him imbued with life, what Rembrandt said etches itself onto our aging faces “showing our violence, excesses or kindnesses.” Above all, I try and harness these dichotomies in all my work to tell some sort of a story.


For commissions or inquiries:

stephensabotage@gmail.com