49 West Coffeehouse, Winebar & Gallery, is a place that brings art, music, and community together with great food and drink in an ambiance inspired by the traditional European coffeehouse.

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Steven Krueger

Now exhibiting at 49 West through February 5, 2025

Artist Bio

New Jersey-born and Maryland-based, Steven Krueger has spent the last four decades traveling and living abroad. His art is multicultural in scope representing a polyphonic chorus of international sensibilities that has become manifest across his work in a variety of mediums.

Largely self-taught he briefly studied painting at the ICS School of Art and the Art League of Alexandria. His interest in painting piqued during visits to Austrian museums while living in Vienna in 1997, and he found himself drawn to masterpieces where traces of the artist’s painting process remained visible. He began painting a year later and has continued to produce works at a prolific pace throughout subsequent moves to Guatemala, Finland, India, Argentina, Spain, Washington DC, The Dominican Republic, and Miami.

Rife with allusions to Abstract Expressionism, Art Brut, Cubism, and Fauvism, Krueger’s paintings neither quote nor overturn previous styles but rather funnel their energies into his own translation of human sentiments. He views art as “the skill to document one’s emotions” and emphasizes his desire to elicit emotional response from viewers. The cycle of artistic creation cannot be completed until spectators have internalized and grappled with the personal testimony layered throughout his work.

See her work and learn more here.

Artist Statement

I am excited to share this body of work at 49 West Gallery in downtown Annapolis, a collection that reflects my artistic journey across six countries and countless moments of inspiration. This exhibition, running from December 2024 through January 2025, is a window into the unplanned, spontaneous nature of my creative process.

The majority of the works are figurative, focusing on faces and their emotional expressions. Whether in Finland, India, Argentina, the United States, Spain, or Guatemala, I’ve sought to capture the essence of a fleeting moment—a glance, a mood, an unspoken story. Each painting, rendered in acrylic, watercolor, gouache, oil, or pastel, is an intuitive reaction to the present, born the instant I pick up the brush and begin.

The second part of this collection shifts to inanimate forms, primarily guitars, interpreted through the lens of cubism. For me, objects are more than their surface; they are puzzles to be deconstructed and reimagined. I take pleasure in breaking them apart and rearranging their essence into an abstract composition that transcends realism.

Whether working on canvas, burlap, masonite, or paper, I am drawn to exploring the balance between structure and spontaneity. Through both the human figure and the fragmented object, I hope these works invite viewers to pause, connect, and see the world through a lens of emotion and imagination.

– Steven Krueger

 

His work is on display at 49 West located at 49 West St, Annapolis, MD 21401. Open daily.