STEPHEN COYLE

The subject is ordinary, the technique, extraordinary. Stephen Coyle's remarkable paintings offer a glimpse of commonplace objects and events rendered with a quiet eloquence. "At the age of twenty-two I started drawing and soon after I began to paint. At the age of twenty-four I entered my very first museum. Upon seeing a still life by some guy named Cezanne I was stunned. I kept trying to pull myself away from the painting but it kept pulling me back. I spent well over an hour looking at that painting. My being was rocked to the core. A door opened and I found my path. Since that time the standard bearers for my art have been Cezanne and Van Gogh. Not for their styles or techniques but for their gift to use their life along with the people and things that compose that life as fodder for their art. In order to accomplish what they did, each artist, in his own way, had to live and feel deeply. I live my life, observe, feel and paint."