Introduction.
Stephen Namara is a contemporary artist currently living and working in San Francisco, California. Like many of his peers, he arrived in San Francisco during the latter half of the 1970s as a student at the San Francisco Art Institute. With an exhibiting career spanning over five decades, Namara has held regular solo exhibitions throughout the United States since the early 1980s. Early in his career, he exhibited with Haines Gallery, later with Dolby Chadwick Gallery, both located in San Francisco, as well as Koplin Gallery in Los Angeles and more recently with Andra Norris Gallery in Burlingame, California. The portrait, the still-life, and the realization of specific spaces have been enduring concerns for him. Although his subjects are intrinsically recognizable, they are also chosen for their abstract qualities. His minimalist approach, characterized by pure lines and a richness in color, makes his works immensely contemplative. Carefully selected and presented in a setting devoid of clutter, his pieces are given breathing space. They vibrate with stillness, evoking a sensation of peace and serenity while inviting a narrative and an attachment between the viewer and the painting.
In his most recent exhibition of portrait paintings and drawings, he has revisited the self-portrait as a primary theme, not only to evoke a narrative within the viewer's imagination but also as a means of exploring significant social and political issues utilizing the expressive power of painting and drawing.
Over the past few years has dedicated himself to making changes in his use of dry pigments to create still-life and non-figurative drawings, each a unique composition with a strong minimalist focus on form and color. His concerns here being: time, color, illusion, pattern, and scale. His exhibition at the Richmond Art Center ('Pause, Gap, Omission') in 2019 was fascinating as it was pertinent, notably in the use of dry pigments in abstraction but also in the continuing impetus of abstraction. A sequential process that allows us to see a side of the painter's visual language that his figurative paintings do not show. Namara's work stands as a testament to his remarkable ability to transform the mundane into profound, quietly meditative art.