Stephen Morath

For over thirty years Stephen Morath has painted scenes from all over the Southwest. His pictures rarely represent an actual place, but rather a place as he thinks it should be. They are often nostalgic, sometimes “cartoony”, sometimes quite naturalistic. Mainly he paints northern New Mexico and southern Arizona; but the extremes of his interest range from the frosty peaks of Colorado to the shores of the desert sea in Baja California, and all the wide open spaces in between. Stephen is drawn not only to the beauties but also the oddities of the Southwest – the outrageous topography, the tourist traps, the honky-tonk strips, the old motel signs, the clash of cultures, the places where Indian America meets the science fiction of the ‘Fifties; as well as the pueblos, the sparkling deserts, the blue ranges, the birds in the morning…he prefers the rural countryside to the unpopulated wilderness, and rarely paints a landscape without some kind of human activity or artifact in it. Indeed, some of his paintings are crowded with non-landscape elements. Often, Morath’s paintings exhibit a touch of humor; others he paints to evoke cosmic feelings; still others are complex displays of fruit and vegetables. He is especially fond of small towns, back roads, and blue highways, where old trucks, lowriders, and airstream trailers can be found; and life goes on in a timeless way.