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| Steve Alpert
Fine art painter Steve Alpert was born in Manhattan, in 1951. He started painting three decades ago in college. Then he chose another career. In New York City, he became a television journalist for CBS and NBC, shooting and editing tape as well as writing scripts for news segments. Later, Mr. Alpert went into independent producing, creating industrial and documentary films for 20 years. But, Mr. Alpert’s career took another turn. Following the tragic, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and events that led America to war in Afghanistan and later Iraq, Mr. Alpert took stock of his life. With the strong support of wife, Dorothy, Mr. Alpert decided now was time to turn his talent, creativity and energy toward painting. He devoted more and more time to producing landscape paintings of sweeping skies, fields and beaches from his studio in Quogue, New York on Long Island’s East End. Today, Mr. Alpert’s works have been exhibited and sold in galleries from Red Bank NJ, Rockland Maine, Westport CT, Quebec City, to Key West , Hawaii, New York City, and the East End of Long Island, NY. While Mr. Alpert continues to paint landscapes, the non-stop media images of the War on Terror and the controversy surrounding the conflict have dramatically influenced his artistic direction. One controversial moment occurred in March 2004, involving photographs taken of flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force base in Delaware. As a landscape painter, Mr. Alpert took a big risk by painting a large-scale, 42-inch by 62-inch canvas that illustrates an U.S. Air Force color guard bearing one of the flag-draped caskets. While the artist was moved by the solemn image of military pallbearers, he doubted his ability to create a detailed painting of people. Ironically the image on the Internet that inspired the painting, which Mr. Alpert titled “Duty Courage Honor,” incorrectly stated that the color guard was carrying the casket of a fallen soldier. In fact, the coffin held the remains of a crew member from the Space Shuttle Columbia. Soon after the painting was completed, which occurred on July 4th, the director of the Air Mobility Command Museum at Dover Air Force base invited Steve to exhibit the painting at the facility. The painting hangs there today. The artist followed with his “Through Their Eyes” collection of eight paintings that depict the war in Iraq with a different approach – one that slows down the rapid-fire media images and personalizes the battle zone – by painting the warriors’ views of the day-to-day conflict. The series ranges from paintings of a Black Hawk helicopter streaking across the late-day sky, an eerie battlefield seen through night-scope goggles and a soldier in a firefight as a desert sandstorm swirls around him. Mr. Alpert’s goal for his newest genre of work is to pay tribute to the courageous American men and women who serve the military as well as veterans who fought previous wars. He just completed a major work, “Legacy,” for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Foundation. Building up to his current genre, the artist has come full circle. While Mr. Alpert’s career has taken a 360 degree turn, so has his medium – beginning in oil, switching to watercolors exclusively for more than 20 years and then returning to oil. The road leading to where the artist is now has been long and winding. He grew up with the odor of oil paint and turpentine, as his mother was a classically trained painter. With a vision of becoming a fine art painter as a teenager, Mr. Alpert finally started painting at the age of 19 in 1971. He studied under Allen Atwell at Ithaca College, where he was inspired to paint in a free-wheeling, non-objective approach that allowed his work to be uniquely original. Now, that originality is being noticed publicly on a grander stage, as Mr. Alpert’s dream of painting full-time has been finally realized. Mr. Alpert, whose art studio is on Eastern Long Island, currently lives with his wife Dorothy and dog Ray in Manhattan. | |||||||||||
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