The Paintings of Stephen Knudsen

by Lesa Mason, Ph. D
Professor of Art History
Savannah College of Art and Design

The images painted by Stephen Knudsen are relentless; they are imprinted steadfastly in the minds of their beholders. These images are immediate and multifaceted in their subject matter. Each subject has immediacy, directness and an iconic quality, and the themes deal with powerful reflections of death and mortality. The subjects are people. Places and objects important to the viewer’s understanding and a deep reflection of his past and present reality. Symbols are only chosen in reference to the theme. Reverence for family and friends, love of the natural world and geographical aspects of his childhood homeland in Missouri are the roots of his iconography. The subjects are immersed in a landscape or environment that has been carefully and delightfully scrutinized by the artist. The environments Knudsen paints are living and real, and they are chosen for their specific relationship to the subject. The artist has collected his information about the site in a ceremonial way; and he celebrates in his depiction of it. Laboring to paint meticulously every important detail and referencing all potentialities of the environment to give deeper meaning to the subject. Waterways are central to the content. Knudsen finds a special feeling of union with the outdoors, including great rivers, lakes and oceans in the Midwest and the south and even mountainous areas in Canada and Colorado.

The images have an eternal quality reminiscent of the masters of the Byzantine and Renaissance epochs. The color and light Knudsen employs are brilliant displays comparable to Gothic stained-glass windows. His hue saturation and realism evoke the Flemish artist Jan van Eyck and the Venetian artist Giovanni Bellini. Knudsen’s work is unmistakable and recognized for its rich color revealed in an environment full of light. It is the kind of light that accurately reflects all of the colors in the visual spectrum, all the colors in creation. Knudsen’s figures are seated of standing in light, immersed in a sea of color. Light also has its spiritual references. His images are also very much about the hope, according to the artist, of things”longed for.” the cloth veils a landscape like a holy shroud of an altar cloth. The white cloth, which is bathed in the light of the universe, enshrines a figure and has the potential to reveal mysteries of the sacred world. Knudsen shares a celebration of a sacred place and time, a creature’s life and death, and understanding of and empathy for a friend of loved one’s existence. As we sense in his paintings greatness and reverence for what is beyond, we experience what is intangible, unknown and mysterious. We are immediately reverent before the image. The artist has revealed the image of something very simple, something very real, in a place or a face that is known. The tangible reality depicted within its context illuminates a celebration of life and creation.