Classic Kitsch
American Art Collector|May 2023
Ben Steele blurs the line between pop culture and art history, and throughout the month of May his paintings will be on view in a solo show at GiacobbeFritz Fine Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico
Erin E. Rand
Classic Kitsch

After Steele graduated from the University of Utah, he moved to the small town of Helper, Utah, a former mining and railroad town that has become something of an art colony. “There were a few professors that had retired and they were teaching workshops out here,” he recalls. It was then that he began to develop his signature style, which plays with pop culture and history.

“I had found that I really liked painting crayons, and then that led me into coloring pages,” he says. “But I didn’t necessarily want to do imagery that was too childish.” He thought about how he could incorporate art history to the works and created his first coloring page-inspired painting using the Mona Lisa as his subject.

“From there it snowballed into realizing I could use any kind of cultural or art history reference and expand on it,” he says.

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