Steve Kropp grew up in small towns of Utah and Colorado surrounded by and exploring the beauty of the Colorado Plateau.  This vast, primitive landscape has had a strong influence on his visual vocabulary.

He graduated in 1982 from the illustration program at Utah State University.  Steve moved to New York City in 1983 to begin freelancing, producing illustrations for magazines and paperback book covers.  Over the next several years, he lived in Denver, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City pursuing an award-winning career in illustration primarily for the publishing industry.  After returning to Utah, he began to spend more time hiking and camping in the deserts and mountains and this re-awakened a desire to paint the land.  He experimented with mediums and styles, producing watercolors, pastels, and woodcuts but eventually settled on oils as his preferred medium.

“I have become passionate about developing my own approach to depicting the land around me.  Painting sketches on location is increasingly important to me, because nature is a corrective influence that keeps me grounded.  Often I use these field sketches to create larger versions in the studio.  Sometimes they stand on their own, or I may continue to work on them in the studio.  Even though the natural world is the ultimate source of my visual inspiration, my paintings are simplified, stylized and personalized.  I select the colors, patterns and shapes that interest me in a scene and emphasize them.  I then compose and create my art through a meditative process allowing a painting to evolve and develop, always seeking the poetic spark that brings it to life.  My studio paintings are a synthesis of memories, imagination and impressions in which photographic reference and field studies contribute to but do not dictate the final result.”

Steve and his family live in Cache Valley Utah.