His multifaceted career stretches from musician to engineer and attorney, and poet and artist. Throughout Evans' remarkable journey, he unwaveringly nurtured his powers as an artist. "Creativity has been a constant passion throughout my life," says the artist. In the mid-1980s, that passion led him to study with the distinguished Russian landscape painter, Kiril Doron, and later with Christopher Blossom, John Stobart, Joseph McGurl, and Donald Demers, all highly regarded contemporary marine artists.
Born on the coast of Stamford, Connecticut, Evans' early forays into the visual arts were charcoal drawings of ships and the sea. "Growing up on the coast gave me an appreciation for sailing and the sea, as well as for boating, swimming and all that is part of a shore area upbringing," observes Evans. At Stamford's famous boatyards he saw many of the 12s being built and he often sailed and raced. It was Stamford's proximity to New York City which afforded a teenage Evans the opportunity to explore and study the City's abundant art world. This experience plunged him into years of reading and study of art history, and of the marine painters.
In love with the stately wooden ships of the past, Evans re-examines historical maritime structures and environs through a perception shaped by the present, and he honors the past by bringing his notion of nautical nobility to the canvas. "But that is not the end of it," says Evans. "My paintings are a means for me to express feelings and emotions that are not always possible for me to put into words, not even poetical words. For me, painting is communication beyond reason, beyond common understanding. It could possibly be the highest form of communication."
Among the canon of marine artists, Evans acknowledges influence from 19th century artists, Fitz Henry Lane and J.M.W. Turner, and from 20th century artist, Montague Dawson. These influences may be observed in Evans' oft romanticized, albeit precise, renditions of ships, and also in his concentration on the variability of light, his smooth gradation of color, and his deliberation of the sky as intense as his attention to the scene on and near the sea. The sky might appear as a canopy of mountainous white clouds, a pink sunset at the horizon beneath the blue calm of approaching twilight, the last fiery flashes of a rapidly disappearing sun at the end of the day, or the grays of an encroaching storm. In the habit of Turner, color sometimes washes over all, uniting ship, water, earth and sky.
The artist is nationally known, has sold internationally as well, and has had one person exhibitions or been featured yearly since 1989. These shows have been in Newport, RI; Nantucket, MA; Carmel, CA; Sandy Hook, CT; Southbury, CT; Wellfleet, MA; Dennis, MA; Hyannis, MA; and in an American Society of Marine Artists exhibition held at the Cape Museum of Fine Arts entitled "Masters of the Sea." He is a member of the American Society of Marine Artists, The International Guild of Realism, and an elected member of the Mystic Art Association. He has had pieces exhibited at the Cape Cod Museum of Art in 2002, 2003 and 2004, and his paintings are in numerous private, business and corporate collections. He teaches Plein Air painting as well as Studio painting classes, and is represented in some of the better fine art galleries around the country. Among them are:
Sheldon Fine Art - Newport, RI, (on Bowen's Wharf)
Sheldon Fine Art - Naples, Florida
Trade Winds Gallery - Mystic, Ct
Meridian Galleries - Greenwich, CT
Meridian Galleries - Nantucket, MA.
Plympton Fine Art - Plympton, MA.
Art of the Sea - South Thomaston, ME
Hearle Gallery - Chatham, MA. (on occasion)
Gallery Americana - Carmel, CA (previously)
l Original Paintings l
