My name is Brad Stephens and I have been a shadow artist
for many years. I have lived in the
shadow of my older brother Nick who is a professional artist. I have been his consultant and assistant with
many of his art projects, but I have never made any of my own large works of
art. Over the last few years I have
dabbled making small art objects from paper, wire, wood and some colored ink. I created some very beautiful things and gave
most of them away to family and friends.
I have even won first place in a national paper crafting competition [Close
To My Heart, 2009].
However, my creative desires were never satisfied on such
a small scale. For years I have resisted
the urge to create larger works of art.
I was intimidated by the learning curve that all artists go
through. When I was in junior high and
high school I would obsess over having the best looking art projects. I wanted to be the best, but never had the
drive to continue developing my art talents.
After all I was the younger brother of a naturally talented and
passionate artist. I am smart and talented
in many fields so it was only natural that I should choose to follow a
different path. Well, life happened and
I was guided along an unexpected and different journey.
Many years later I am finally realizing that being creative
is built into who I am. An important
part of happiness in my life is found in creating new and beautiful things. I learn mostly by reading and seeing. There are a lot of ideas and concepts floating
around in my mind and I would like to see them expressed visually. I have a lot of inspirations that I feel need
to be manifested for the benefit and enlightenment of others. Also, having recently moved into a house with
my brother that has a lot of studio space it has been harder to come up with
rationalizations for not creating artwork.
There are many other complicated and probably subconscious reasons for
wanting to create things so I won’t explore all of them here on this blog.
With the encouragement of Nick and others I have decided
that the time has come to create works of art on a larger scale. So my first
blog post is related to stepping out of the shadows into the creative light. Choosing to take that light and learn from it
and then make something good is not easy.
I have had many ups and downs, setbacks and triumphs. Exercising faith and hope that something
would eventually work out was the best course of action, because it finally
did. After finishing my first
professional art work I have learned many things. The most important is that when you work with
God’s inspiration and grace you will be successful (according to His timetable). That requires patience, diligence and humility!
I am planning on making more creations in the next
months, years and eons. I will be
sharing them on this blog as time allows.
I have never wanted to be on the internet and social media so this is
difficult for me to open myself and my art to the world. One of the main reasons for making art is to
let other people look at it. If I only
made art for myself and never showed it to anyone I would be hiding my talents.
I hope you enjoy my new art!
