Born in Detroit, Michigan, Smulka attended The School of Visual Arts in Manhattan on a full scholarship, studying under Chuck Close, among others. He completed graduate school at The University of Massachusetts at Amherst with an MFA.Steve Smulka has been included in collections in North and South America, Europe, Japan, and Australia. He is a two-time recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and has been collected by some of America’s largest corporations. He currently lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. “My intention for the paintings is not to be photorealistic but to leave a trace of the artist’s hand and a subtle record of brushstrokes; to create a feeling of space and atmosphere that is more tangible than a photograph. I’m not concerned with just copying a photograph. I always intensify what I see. This careful observation of light and shadow is made more intense by the larger than life-size scale of the painted objects. Finding beauty in the details is one of the main inspirations for my paintings.”— Steve Smulka