SCREAM Gala & Auction Artist Highlight: Jay Steensma
By Alexis Chapman
We’re honored to be able to present this Untitled piece in our auction this year by artist Jay Steensma, generously donated by artist Billy King. This piece was gifted to Billy King from Madison Audio in the late 1990’s as a part of a thank you for running an alternative gallery at Madison Audio for 5 years. It is an exquisite example of Steensma ability to create “moments of acute and resounding alienation” wrapped in deep muted tones.
More about the artist: Jay Steensma
““The history of Northwest art can never be written without reference to Jay Steensma.””
Jay Steensma was an American artist, sometimes described by reviewers as a latter-day exponent of the Northwest School of artists. He was known for both emulating and satirizing the “hallmarks of the Northwest School: dark colors, cloudy skies, vaguely spiritual symbols, and an acute sense of how the world is dangerous for innocent being like birds, fish - and artists.” (Kangas, 1995)
Steensma was an extremely prolific painter whose content often included chalices, snakes, houses, clouds, birds, and fish. While primarily known as a painter, he often used unusual media like latex house paint on brown paper shopping bags to create his work. Long-time Seattle-PI critic, Regina Hackett, once said that “with a few strokes, he could render a landscape that reverberates with visual meaning, a mood stated with the barest of means.” While his work was often muted in tones, it could have a stark and powerful quality.
Since the 1970s Steensma lived in Seattle's Greenlake neighborhood with his 26 year partner and fellow artist Ree Brown. He was highly influential on local artist included Ree Brown, Joe Reno, Joseph Goldberg, Sylvain Klaus and popular grunge photographer Alice Wheeler. Wes Wehr, who often went with Jay for drawing sessions at area coffeehouses. Wehr collected works by Steensma that he later donated to a number of museums around the northwest. He was one of the more successful artists in the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s and 90s, but had long standing health problems, and died in Seattle at age 52.
A memorial exhibition was held at the Henry Art Gallery in 1995, and Seattle's Center on Contemporary Art held a major retrospective in 1997. His artwork is in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution and of all major art museums in the Pacific Northwest.
Sources:
Hackett, Regina. “Jay Steensma – I Can Feel the Heat Closing In.” Another Bouncing Ball, 2009, www.artsjournal.com/anotherbb/2009/09/jay_steensma_-_i_can_feel_the.html.
“Jay Steensma.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Dec. 2018, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Steensma.
Kangas, Matthew. “1996-1999.” CoCA Seattle, 2019, cocaseattle.org/1996-1999.
Kangas, Matthew. “Steensma Exhibit Reflects His Dark, Brooding Vision.” The Seattle Times, The Seattle
Times Company, 1995, archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19950227.
Wheeler, Alice. “MoNA.” Jay Steensma | MoNA, 1 Jan. 1970,www.museumofnwart.org/artist/jaysteensma.
