05 Mar ARTIST SPOTLIGHTS: STEVE HASTINGS

Steve Hastings feels driven by some higher power to conceive and create his magically realistic paintings of desert flora backed by the Southwest’s rugged landscape and skies. “If I see a cactus or I’m out on a road trip taking pictures, I might actually hear the word ‘Wow!’ It’s from outside and coming through me, like a daemon,” he says, evoking the ancient Greek concept of spiritual messengers between the gods and humans. “I try not to think about it but just go blank and let it tell me what to paint.”

The results are large-scale oil wonders like Badlands, in which a saguaro bursts into bloom backed by one of the Mittens buttes in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park on the Arizona-Utah border. Not that he necessarily saw that specimen in that location. “I was in Phoenix when I photographed the saguaro, and my brother and I were on a road trip when I took those landscape shots.” Photoshop did the rest of the work to create a singular reference image that “just looked right.” Drawing a grid on a canvas he’d first covered in a warm burnt sienna wash helped him “stay in the ballpark” while enlarging the image freehand, drawing the composition in paint, and then working from background to foreground over an estimated 80 to 100 hours of detailed brushwork. “And as I painted, it somehow changed from the original reference photos, which are just the point of departure,” Hastings concludes of how each painting takes on a life of its own.

Badlands | Oil on Canvas | 60 x 48 inches | 2024

Though he hadn’t set out to create such signature works, Hastings felt art’s calling as far back as childhood, during which his father’s Air Force postings took the family from Germany to the Fairbanks suburb of North Pole, Alaska, to Northern Michigan, and eventually, El Paso, Texas. “I remember I copied a simple drawing from a magazine ad for the Famous Artists School, and my mother walked up to me and said, ‘You’re gonna be a great artist!’ For some reason, I believed her.”

Eventually, Hastings earned a Bachelor of Fine Art from the University of Texas at El Paso, studying under respected painter, sculptor, and printmaker Robert Massey. “He taught me a lot of the classical techniques of drawing and painting.” In the 1970s, Hastings visited Santa Fe for the first time and fell in love with Georgia O’Keeffe’s work. But his initial dreams of artistic success led to 10 years in New York. “I thought I’d be an international artist painting socially charged stuff, but I wasn’t getting any recognition. I got really sad. Then, I heard a voice in my head say, ‘Just do beautiful things.’”

Tower of Flower | Oil on Canvas | 60 x 48 inches | 2023

Eventually, settled back in El Paso and guided by his daemon, if you will, Hastings began painting his masterly juxtapositions of iconic Southwestern images. Collectors took notice. He’s not planning to explore new directions anytime soon. “I’ve thought about changing styles,” he concludes. “But my intuition tells me not yet.”

Hastings is represented by Sorrel Sky Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Based in Marin County, California, Norman Kolpas is the author of more than 40 books and hundreds of articles. He also teaches nonfiction writing in The Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension.