Stephen Hale 1961 - 2008
American, Painter

Stephen Hale studied at the Rhode Island School of Design. He is a portrait artist whose works are labor-intensive realist drawings. Densely applied graphite on paper is his medium. His minimalist use of spare backgrounds and sparse environmental details focuses the viewers attention while intensifying the isolation and alienation of his figures. "Their expressions are cryptic. They don't offer the mystery of the blank stare but, instead, the challenge of possessing a secret we can't know...something about them they are not going to tell you." (Gary Indiana)

Steven Hale, Male Nudes, catalog. Bridgewater/Lustberg Gallery, 1995.

Tom Saettel, The Drawings of Steven Hale, The Archive: The Journal of the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation no. 17 (Summer 2005).