Dan Steeves (1959 - )

Artist Biography

The voice of Dan Steeves is like the artist himself: quiet, thoughtful, and a bit removed from modern life.He does not seem to be a hasty man. Perhaps this is his nature. Or maybe it reflects years of printmaking, in which quick movement can ruin months of work.

Ask Steeves about the landscape depicted in his image of The Hopewell Rocks (shown above), and he explains, “I grew up in Riverview, New Brunswick. Our family spent a lot of time at The Rocks and Fundy National Park.”

In fact, his connection with the area reaches back for generations. “My Stieff [Steeves] ancestors arrived in New Brunswick by boat in 1766. They sailed up the Bay of Fundy past Point Wolfe in the park. They would have seen The Hopewell Rocks on the way to Hillsborough.

I feel such a sense of rootedness here,knowing this.”He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1981 from Mount Allison University (MTA) in Sackville, NB.

Since then, he has seldom worked far from home. Other than visiting-artist stints across Canada, he has been with MTA from 1981 onward, serving as a printmaking technician and lecturer since the early 1990s.

Steeves has won many key awards, including the Strath butler Award (2007) and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Award (1981). He has had nationally touring solo exhibits. His work has appeared in more than 100 galleries and shows around the world.

Selected prints have also been featured in books, including “The Bone Fields” (1993) and “The Light That Lives in Darkness” (2004).

Steeves feels a strong commitment to his students. “I teach by telling stories,” he says. “My works and my teaching involve things we really need to deal with in this century”—things, he adds, that are not antiquated but that are part of the human journey: death, life and a sense of belonging.

Storytelling helps people to discover the universal within them. Steeves, through his printmaking and mentoring, is gently making this happen, one print and one person at a time.