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PLACEHOLDER. ARTIST STATEMENT

When I was younger, I used to daydream about being an artist: dramatically living in an abandoned garret in France, chain-smoking cigarettes, a dubious mattress flopped on the floor, surrounded by abandoned drawings, littered with unpaid bills. The melodrama of the “young artist” trope was irresistible to me. Think “My Name is Asher Lev.” Think “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.” Think "Paint Me Blood Red." Admittedly, this wasn’t the most popular stance to have on the playground—at least, not until I started drawing cartoon characters. Garfield was by far the favorite. Classic misdirection: kids saw those drawings instead of me; kids liked those drawings instead of me. Things didn’t turn out that way....

..Like carving, bold color is a choice. Timid, tasteful colors felt like hiding—a way of screaming, “Please like me, I’m compliant.” Strong line and bold color felt honest, even raw. The unforgiving nature of carving made me a more decisive artist, someone who no longer hides behind muddy colors or indistinct lines.
​Printmaking itself is full of contradictions. Print shops are communal spaces, places where people work side by side, sharing tools and techniques, building a sense of community that runs counter to my old idea of artists as isolated geniuses. The printers I learned from were generous with their time and knowledge, and that openness changed my whole sense of what being an artist could mean.
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​Rob Stephens ​

Now, I’m a printmaker, painter, and comic creator. My work juxtaposes accessible whimsy—childlike lines, intense colors—with the realities of pain and anxiety, often through self-parody. I use confessional, non-fictional elements to show how beauty can arise out of human frailty and vulnerability, especially amid everyday life and all the mass-mediated images we absorb.
The physically demanding process of woodcarving forced me to rethink everything. Wood doesn’t want to be carved; it resists, and you have to meet it with a kind of brute energy just to make a mark. The rough cuts in my woodblocks matched my anxious line quality. Carving gave those lines a weight and permanence they’d never had when painted. In order to inscribe an image onto the wood, you had to really mean it. The time, the effort converted the scrawls into choices...