Oil painting depicting a Small nude figure laying on a small flat surface at the bottom of the picture plane.

Now a local Michigan artist, Stephen Duren attended the San Francisco Art Institute in the 1970s but skipped many of his studio classes in favor of working outside, directly from nature. During these periods of plein-air painting he absorbed countless textures and patterns from the landscape. This visual vocabulary became the foundation for his painting, as his personal style moved from realism to abstraction. On his work he reflects, “Much of my work remains semi-abstract, but I am often lured away from my studio by the desire to paint directly from nature, a call I have answered since I was 15.”