Artist Bio
Having grown up in Sacramento,
Steve Memering
is proud to be a River City native. He received his education at CSUS, Berkeley and Carnegie-Mellon. He, then, returned to Sacramento to live and work. Steve has had a long career as a teacher and artist. Today, he divides his time between painting several hours in the morning and working full-time as a middle school art teacher. During the summer, he also teaches adult painting workshops both here and abroad. For years, Steve had developed a reputation as an accomplished watercolor artist. Gradually, he discovered, for him, each painting was becoming a kind of journey. Opaque mediums, such as oil and acrylic gave him the freedom he needed to re- evaluate and explore his ideas along the way. Never really abandoning the demanding constraints of watercolor entirely, he now works predominantly in oil on canvas. Sacramento subjects are a major theme in Steve's current paintings and all of his latest work has acquired its own unique look. The dramatic play of light and dark has become a persistent theme in his work along with bold, emotion-based color schemes.Uncomfortable with photographic realism, Steve prefers to "interpret", rather than "report", a subject. "I paint what I remember; not what I see" Steve explains. "I try to edit out everything not essential and get to what is really there." He finds conventional photographic realism mundane and misleading. "What a camera records is not what I see." Steve's work can be found in galleries, businesses and homes all over the state. Sports fans might have seen several of his paintings hanging in the hallways of Raley field and in Skyline Restaurant at Arco Arena. Downtown Sacramento is becoming increasingly peppered with his paintings and limited editions. A prominent downtown restaurant, for example, has a wall of his large Sacramento scenes. Recently, Steve entered the Crocker Kingsley Exhibition and won the People's Choice award. Steve Memering considers Smith Gallery - on 11th and K Street – his "home base"where his originals and limited editions can be seen, enjoyed and purchased.