White Room: Steven Baines

Referring to multiple traditions in painting, Steven Baines’s oil paintings present small, discrete scenes against bold, geometric grounds. Presenting such delicate items as a candle flame, soap bubbles and small birds, the settings in the center of each composition refer to the fleeting and ephemeral, carrying on the convention of Momento Mori messages in seventeenth century still-life work. Yet the placement of these scenes against modernist color field and Op-Art style grounds gives the work a more contemporary feel. The use of tiny glass beads over oil paint gives areas of the canvas a reflective, shimmering surface. Baines has a BFA from the School of Visual Arts, NY. He has exhibited his work at Brooklyn Fire Proof, Urban Etc., and Pat Hearn Gallery. This is his first solo show.