Steven Bogart

Artist Statement

At age five, I made a crayon drawing of clothes on a clothesline swinging in the breeze. I believed the drawing was alive. From that moment, art became an escape from the challenges of a difficult childhood. This safe haven provided a way to move forward and positively contribute to the world. 

2009, I spent nine days in the Inyo Mountains of Southern California on a personal vision quest. The climax of that experience was an inspiring vision of the wonder and mystery of nature that drew a thru-line from my childhood art-making to the adult artist I am today. Painting has become a positive outcome of my vision quest experience.

I work in both visual and verbal expression. My paintings have the narrative complexity and dramatic contexts that define my playwriting and directing.

In my visual work, I'm interested in expressing the ineffable mystery of our universe. My images span a vast range that evokes the macro worlds of our imagined universe to the microscopic ones that can be located only with the help of science and mathematics. I have developed a way of working that suits this conceptual duality by combining the fluidity of oil paint with the stiff, shiny qualities of enamel paint.

In my surreal work, I follow the impulses of my imagination to reveal a subconscious relationship to the external world, which may include political, social justice, and more psychological concerns. I am forever curious about where each new project will take me.

Artist Bio

Steven Bogart has exhibited his work at the Decordova Museum (Big Bang, Abstract Painting in the Twentieth Century), The Fitchburg Museum, The Katonah Museum, Ueno Metropolitan Museum of Art (Tokyo), Locco Ritoro Gallery, Boston, The Bromfield Gallery, Boston, Buffalo, NY, Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, and Chicago. He is a contributor to Arts In Giving, which raises money for pediatric cancer research through the sale and loans of artworks, and he is an artist with the DeCordova Museum Corporate Loan program.

Also a playwright, screenwriter, and stage director, he has directed for the American Repertory Theater(Cabaret), (The Boston Abolitionist Project), Wheelock Family Theatre(Pinocchio), Company One(Shockheaded Peter, Dry Land, Peerless, Greater Good, and Walking with Amal), Boston Playwrights’ Theater (Ginger Lazarus’s, Burning, Dan Hunter’s, Legally Dead), Liars and Believers’ (Lunar Labyrinth and Interference), and Brandeis University (Cabaret, and Orlando). He has collaborated on projects with Neil Gaiman, James Carroll, Kate Snodgrass, Amanda Palmer, and Robert Brustein.

Bogart’s plays have received performances in Boston (Boston Theater Works, Boston Theater Marathon), NYC (SPFNYC, 2007), and Chicago (Stage Left Theater, Leapfest). He is a 2015 Massachusetts Cultural Council fellow in playwriting and was a 2009 Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant recipient in playwriting. His play, Pigcat, received the Holland New Voice Award at the 2010 Great Plains Theater Conference.