Stephen M Haldaman

My approach to painting and life is one of reverence and wonder.

With close to 70 years of existence, I have a substantial amount of material to work with. However this shall be a highly abbreviated version.

Here goes... I grew up on a small farm in Northwestern Oklahoma, the 7th of 8 children. My interest in painting was awakened through a group of prints of the impressionists and post impressionist that my folks picked up at a local Trades Day Sale. The works that really spoke to me were the paintings of Vincent Van Gogh. Although at that early age, I could not have articulated why.

Our rural school had an art program and from my first experience I was smitten with the process of painting. In high school I received my first noteworthy recognition though a regional interscholastic competition sponsored by Southwestern Oklahoma State University. Receiving first place in painting 2 years consecutive.

My early vision and the expression of that vision took the form of paintings of the Western Oklahoma landscapes from which I was raised. The stark landscape seem to speak its own symbolic language in the form of weathered boards, rusted sheet-metal... and cobbled together farm machinery. I rendered these subjects with acrylics on canvas. These, my first environmentally inspired paintings received awards and acknowledgment at art fairs and museums showings across Western Oklahoma, Southern Kansas and the Northern Texas areas.

Moving on with the narrative. After a short marriage and subsequent divorce I chose to move to the Springfield, Missouri area (where one of my older siblings lived) with a desire to reinvent my life.

I fell in love with the Ozarks Mountains... their extensive pallet of greens and the rounded contours of the ancient hills. I earned my livelihood primarily as a street artist... creating live portraits of people in the Ozark tourist towns of Springfield, Branson and Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Over time, as I created art on demand... in the moment, my understanding of the creative process shifted from painting an object based perceptual reality... to interacting with the energies animating my subjects. This changed my work from a 'Wyeth' like realism... to an expressionistic interaction with the energies that animated my subjects.