Randall Steeves’ paintings celebrate the complexity of the natural world. The paintings are made from encaustic, a beeswax based paint that is heated and brushed onto the canvas where it hardens immediately. The process results in a complex surface that can be read as a chronology of the painting’s construction and a record the painter’s physical presence and actions.

Viewing this work, one is reminded of John Cage’s famous dictum that art should imitate nature “not in her appearance but in her manner of operation.” Charged with human energy, these paintings seek to describe a situation that is at once fluid and static. The work infers a sense of our relationship to the material universe at every scale, from the imperceptibly small to the unimaginably immense.

Randall Steeves was born in Saint John, New Brunswick. He studied at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick and received an MFA from the University of Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia. Since then he has been based in the Vancouver area. He has lectured and led workshops at art galleries, colleges and universities across Western Canada and has exhibited his work internationally.

Selected Works

For more details or for a complete list of available works, please contact the Gallery.