Artist Statement

My paintings grow from a lifetime spent in the mountains, forests and coastal landscapes of northern New England. I am drawn to places where natural forces remain visible—weather moving across a ridge, alpine vegetation above tree line, water finding its course from the headwaters, or granite meeting the sea.

I do not approach every landscape with a predetermined idea. Some places call for atmosphere and restraint; others demand strong, interlocking shapes, heightened color and the physical movement of paint. My work therefore ranges from close observation toward abstraction, while remaining grounded in an actual place and experience.

Painting allows me to recover more than appearance. I am seeking the felt character of the landscape: its scale, instability, endurance and changing light. Whether working in the White Mountains, on Monhegan, along the Maine coast or in the Adirondacks, I use color, structure and an increasingly tactile surface to translate memory and direct encounter into paint.

Biography

Roy Stever is an oil landscape painter based in Easton, New Hampshire. He began painting seriously later in life and is now approaching a decade devoted to the mountains, forests, headwaters and coastal environments of northern New England and the Adirondacks. Since becoming a professional artist in 2022, he has produced and sold paintings and prints, ranging from intimate 4-by-4-inch studies to 36-by-48-inch canvases.

A graduate of Cornell University in natural resource management, Stever brings a lifetime of experience in wild landscapes to his work. He has studied with New England painter Margaret Gerding, whose teaching lineage extends through Wolf Kahn to Hans Hofmann. His paintings move between plein-air observation and larger studio compositions, and from atmospheric representation toward expressive color and heavily worked, nearly abstract surfaces.

His recent exhibitions include three featured shows at Kennedy Gallery in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, as well as at the Appalachian Mountain Club’s Highland Center. Since 2024, a four-piece installation of his archival prints has been exhibited at New England Cancer Specialists, a Dana-Farber Cancer Institute affiliate, at Rock Row in Westbrook, Maine.

Stever’s work is represented by Kennedy Gallery in Portsmouth, NH and The Wright Gallery in Kennebunkport, ME, and is held in private collections.