"Think of that moment just before, or just after, something happens. Think of ‘something happening’ as the sun setting, as a spider catching a fly, as the moon rising over a mountain range or a rooftop. Think of the transitional life/death event that uproots everything, a transition to a new normal. Think of that moment –still and suspenseful– as a trope of movies and novels. The paintings of Stephen W. Evans seem to be painted with a concentrate derived from such tropes. The brooding atmosphere, mesmerizing yet peaceful. Evans paints close to the heart. I’d call it Romanticism, but his Romanticism is stripped of grandeur. In the absence of the sublime, there might be an epiphany in the shape of the trees, in an abandoned car, in the act of painting."
Pieter Dobbelsteen, Foundwork, 2019
“The American romantic notion of a “pure” land, untouched and god-given is troubling. Yet these small, intimate and subtle paintings have resuscitated my faith in a representation of American space that feels emotionally pure, where each work is an earnest articulation of individual experience. Humble things, these paintings approach a feeling rather than a specific location. Evans’ delicate, awkward touch renders images that set off a nostalgic chain-reaction in my head. There’s a rustic cabin in the woods, campfire tales. There are folk songs in these paintings, inaudible as they might seem.”
Olivia Jia, Stephen W. Evans’s Landscapes of the Mind, ArtBlog, 2018