The Elizabeth A. Beland Gallery at Essex Art Center is pleased to presentesp for friends, paintings, sculpture and films by Stephen St. Francis Decky.

Stephen St. Francis Decky has followed an innate and persistent creative impulse from a very early age.  He is, foremost, a painter, but his paintings are informed and influenced by intensive diversions into music, video, and animation.  This has led to his work making videos based on paintings, multi-channel animated video installations, and multi-media performance pieces.  His paintings feature an ever-evolving cast of characters interacting within a perpetually-shifting, pastel-colored landscape.  From his statement: "Visibly stripped of menace and negativity, the characters slip in and out of matter and physical law in a liminal display of neutral and sensual balance.  In video and trans-media production, they remain outwardly positive, even when the subject turns to existential abandonment and their own ever-impending mortality.  As they drift from canvas to video to the real world, their interchangeable personalities betray a unified, transmutative philosophy of their - and our - place in the world."

Stephen St. Francis Decky's work has been included in gallery exhibitions, festivals and in collections, nationally and internationally, including The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Nogoya, Japan.  He received his Master's Degree from Tufts University and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Image credit: Stephen St. Francis Decky, Exil et le Royaume (II of III), acrylic on aquabord, 8 x 10", 2014

For additional information about this exhibition or to receive high resolution digital images for publication, please contact Cathy McLaurin cathyessexartcenter@yahoo.com  or  at 978-685-2343.