About the Artist

An artist of international stature, Steve Hickok has exhibited his work throughout North America and the world(London,Paris,and Seoul)-alongside legendary masters—Matisse, Picasso, and Dali.

Steve has enjoyed considerable success, but his focus has not been solely on his own work.  For over twelves years he has collaborated with younger artists, educating and encouraging them in the pursuit of their careers.  Hickok, himself, was the youngest artist accepted by the Suzanne Brown Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona where he exhibited along with Fritz Scholder and Ed Mell. 

Though he was formed by the Southwest, Steve's travels have taken him around the world.  His work, therefore, reveals a broad cultural mix, blending Asian, European and North American elements.

His current residence and studio is in Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives with his wife and family.

Son of the Southwest, Descendent of Wild Bill

Hickok was born in Phoenix, Arizona on January 31, 1959. From the earliest days, his artistic vision was molded by the harsh beauty and rough topography of the American Southwest. It was perhaps inevitable that the matrix of his style would be the undulating sand of the desert with its broad mesas and hogbacks, its red skies and bizarre, twisted, red-rock hoodoo columns.

The artist is a direct descendant of the legendary cowboy, Wild Bill Hickok. At an early age Steve was captivated by the gunslinger's exploits and shared his fascination with Native American culture and its iconic forms. The tepee, the arrowhead, and the zig-zag border décor on Indian artifacts—all these, along with the biomorphs of the desert, have come to form the geometry of his art.

Series: Stories and Squares

Stories and Squares introduces viewers to a chronicle of adoptions, many of them international, with some of the children journeying around the globe to find their new homes. And while the squares tell stories of exclusion, chaos and pain, there is, on every canvass, the mark of expectation, the imprint of a child's hand.

Hickok says, "I see the squares as story boards in a drama being played out in a frame-by-frame sequence. How do you read it? That depends entirely on what you, the reader, bring to it."

"What I bring to it—it's very personal, because I've met these children. For me, each one is an incarnation of hope," he says. "You look at their faces—hope just radiates, it shines out at you. That's so powerful; that's what animated me as I created this series. I know them, and I know the adoptive parents, too. They're my friends. What really moved me was the power of their love, how it drove them to spend years in the adoption effort and then go half-way around the world to find the children and bring them home. "

Series: The Earth

Hickok's newest series was done in the secluded forest that borders his Atlanta studio. Steve mused on the way it took shape there. "I just abandoned myself—and my work—entirely to nature.

"As I painted, the canvases lay upright on the ground. I'd leave them there overnight, sometimes for days. And so rain, wind and sun would add their textures—leaves and insects also left their imprint. It was fascinating to watch a work surrendered to the elements. Earth was the subject of the series, Earth was also its maker."

"I used a lot of paint. I just let it flow down the canvases and let gravity takes its course, so I never knew exactly what would happen. I'd be putting down fresh paint over half-dried paint, and then another layer and another, and it felt, for a long time, as if the art were creating itself, spontaneously. "

"Sometimes what would come out would be so strong I didn't need to do much at all with it. But then sometimes I'd rework it extensively until its inner form emerged. The whole series felt strangely collaborative—a reckless abandon perfected by nature."

Tribute to Picasso

The artist was in Chicago in April of 2010 to unveil his newest painting, Picasso Tribute. It can be seen on the seventh floor of Burnham Pointe, the 28-storey luxury residential and retail tower in Chicago's Printer's Row.

Hickok remembers his last trip to Chicago: "When I was invited to do the Burnham project, I came to the city but I had no intention, at that time, of doing this tribute. I just went to Daley Plaza to see the Picasso again and take some photos. The plaza was filled that day with booths, you know the food booths of some ethnic festival, so it was a challenge. I had to shoot from some pretty bizarre angles to avoid the white tents everywhere. But as it turned out, that forced effort produced some amazing shots and you see them in this work.

Picasso Tribute (5 ft. x 15 ft.) is a charcoal and acrylic creation, a mural composed of five separate panels. "Picasso worked with charcoal a great deal," Hickok says. "I used big, thick sticks of it. I put charcoal over the grey section and then I just took the acrylic and painted over it."

The focal point of the piece is the eye pairs, along with the bold claw- and wing-like appendages of the beast. "Picasso was strongly influenced by the African mask," says Hickok, "and I wanted to capture that part of Africa, capture it wild."

Along with Picasso Tribute, the twelve-panel Burnham Mural, featuring the famous Chicago architect, is on display on the seventh floor. The environmental work, Peace Plea, hangs in the lobby. These pieces, commissioned by J Bella Interiors of Tempe, Arizona, can be seen at Burnham Pointe, 730 S. Clark St., Chicago.

(See Videos, below, to watch the artist at work, creating Green Plea and Tribute to Picasso. The rapid-fire stop-animation video of the Picasso piece takes the viewer from start to finish as 846 stills flash by in just five minutes).