|
|
Stephen
Pace: Maine Master/Indiana Painter
BIOGRAPHY
Stephen S. Pace
Born in 1918,
Stephen Pace’s life has spanned most of the 20th and into the
21st century. His childhood years were spent with his family on farms
in Missouri and Indiana and gave him a sense of the importance of
family and hard work. Although he loved drawing throughout his childhood,
his first formal art lessons were at the age of seventeen with Robert
Lahr, a WPA artist from Evansville, Indiana. During this time, Pace
began working with an architect doing architectural renderings and
drafting. In 1939 a peacetime draft was instituted and Pace entered
the Army as World War II loomed on the horizon. Along with designing
posters for the Army, his architectural background was used to design
buildings in the U.S. and England during the War. After the War but
before returning to the U.S., Stephen continued painting in Paris
encouraged by a commanding officer who admired his work and gave him
the time to paint. It was there that he met Gertrude Stein and Pablo
Picasso.
Four years in the Army entitled him to four years of education under
the GI Bill, which he used in part to study art in San Miguel de Allende,
Mexico, where he met Milton Avery, one of his strongest influences
and closest friends. From there he moved to New York City where his
landscapes and figurative work gave way to the abstract expressionist
movement of the 1950’s. Through his friendship with Milton Avery,
Stephen met artists such as Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman,
Jackson Pollack and Willem deKooning and many others who studied with
him at the Hans Hofmann School. Pace met and married his lifelong
partner, Palmina, a NY art buyer, who devoted herself to Stephen and
his work. In 1950 and 51 they traveled to Paris and Italy where Stephen
continued his studies. He used the last eleven months of his GI Bill
time to study at Hofmann’s schools in New York and Provincetown,
MA. His large abstract expressionist paintings where exhibited in
major galleries in New York City including seven Whitney Annual and
Biennials.
Then in 1960 they began spending the first of twelve summers in rural
Pennsylvania which made Stephen realize his need to get back to figurative
painting. But their allegiance was gradually transferred to Maine
where he and Pam would camp on longer vacations. In 1972 the Pace’s
bought a house in Stonington, Maine, a small fishing village on Deer
Isle. Summers in Maine provided abundant subject matter of beautiful
land and seascapes and the working people of the village.
After spending more than fifty years between Maine and New York, Stephen
and Pam returned to his boyhood home of Southern Indiana where he
lives and works in a studio on the campus of the University of Southern
Indiana. He and Pam donated their Maine home to the Maine College
of Art along with the paintings in that house. Many other paintings
have been donated to the Evansville Museum and the University of Southern
Indiana in Evansville, IN. There, at the age of 90, he continues his
lifelong commitment to painting. |
|
