Steven Cost sketching at the Japanese Gardens in Fort Worth, Texas
Artist, designer, professor
Full name: James Steven Cost • Nickname: “Prof”
Artist Statement
Steven Cost is best known for his expressive representational paintings and bold abstract art. Because he has spent a great deal of his art career as a graphic designer, the underlying composition is his greatest strength. Several years ago, Cost added collage, assemblage, and mobiles to his media. He designs with his own hand-made paper and recyclable materials. Collage has informed his latest abstract paintings which include a variety of textures and built-up areas. His preferred painting media is watercolor on paper and acrylics on canvas.
“Places, rather than people, are the usual themes in my work. I often paint places I have enjoyed visiting or places from my heart (imagination) where I would like to be,” Cost says. Landscapes frequent his work, sometimes accompanied by a touch of fantasy, and very often are abstracted places. “I’m happiest drawing or painting nature—whether it is of majestic scenes, a tree, or a nice textural close-up. Nature is my primary inspiration, even in my abstracts.”
Knowing his favorite artists says a great deal about Steven Cost as an artist. They include Wassily Kandinsky, the artists of the Russian Avant Garde, Alexander Calder, Antoni Gaudi, George Calvert, Robert Bateman, Edward Betts, Gerald Brommer and Stephen Quiller—all known for their solid compositional skills.
Cost’s art has been shown in many galleries, exhibitions, and competitions; and his works reside in collections around the country. The Steven Cost Studio and Gallery is located in the Galleries at Sunset Center, Amarillo, Texas. Besides being a full-time art professor and fine artist, Cost has been a magazine art director, advertising art director, and package designer. He still freelances graphic design and motion graphics.
Resume
Steven Cost is a tenured associate professor at Amarillo College teaching art and graphic design courses in the Visual Arts Department. He has an MFA in Graphic Design from West Texas A&M University, a MA in Painting from West Texas A&M University in Canyon, Texas in 1988, and another MA in Communication Arts (film and video) from The University of West Florida in Pensacola in 1978. His undergraduate degree is a dual BA major in art and commercial art from Southwestern Oklahoma State University in Weatherford in 1971. In 1969 he studied painting and art history in Italy with Louisiana Tech University living in Rome.
Cost spent his youth among the Kiowa, Comanche and other tribes around the Anadarko and Lawton, Oklahoma area. He learned to draw and paint at an early age. Moving to Amarillo in 1979, after seven years in Florida, he taught art and graphic design for ten years at Texas State Technical College. In 1989, he pursued a full-time fine-art career working in his studio in the Las Tiendas art colony in Amarillo. After three years, he taught graphic design as full-time faculty at Southwestern Oklahoma State University and continued his fine art career as well. This was followed by three years as the art director and photographer for the Amarillo Observer magazine. He returned to teaching when he accepted a position as the head of the commercial art department at Texas State Technical College. In 1995 TSTC was merged with Amarillo College where he has been teaching art and graphic design since. He is presently an associated professor art art teaching painting, drawing, design, and graphic design history. He also teaches workshops in painting and book and paper making.
Steven Cost established his art studio and gallery in November 2007 at The Galleries at Sunset Center where there are 100 art galleries under one roof. Cost has been represented in art galleries and exhibits in Pensacola and Fort Walton Beach, Florida; Taos, New Mexico; Amarillo and Austin, Texas, Oklahoma City, Lawton, and Anadarko, Oklahoma.
PAINTING
Steven Cost paints landscapes in acrylics and watercolors. His strong compositions combine expressive textured and painterly applications contrasted with areas of detailed subject matter. Also he paints figures and portraits, illustrates books, magazines, and web sites. Travels to Italy, Florida, New Mexico, California, Hawaii and man;y other places often give him inspiration for drawings and paintings. The favorite college course he teaches is Painting I and II. Cost is proud that his students learn abstract and realism in several techniques under his curriculum.
DRAWING
Cost teaches drawing classes at Amarillo College, including figure drawing. He believes that his students need to explore many drawing media and techniques — advise he takes for himself. He constantly draws, both large-scale completed drawings suitable for framing, as well as filling up sketchbooks of compositions drawn on location.
HANDMADE BOOKS AND COLLAGES
“I have been making art from age five, back when my mother would bring home old ledger books from the family insurance and real estate business for me to draw. So these were kind of like the old Native American Indian ledger books the tribal recorders would use during the Reservation days since the tribes no longer had access to buffalo hides or deer skins as they did for centuries before. You might say that my first art endeavors were actually altered books,” Cost says.
Using the hand-made paper in many of his creations, unique books may hold his art or items he has collected. Cost says that creating the unique books allows him to combine most of the art skills he enjoys into a single art form. Also to be found are what are called “altered books.” These are hardback books that have new life breathed into them. For instance, one such tome was formerly a book about computer graphics and the internet. It now seems to be a leather-bound manuscript from the Middle Ages. Quite a contrast! Wall hangings feature large handmade paper sheets with a myriad of objects and textures collaged into intriguing compositions. Assembling the collages and montages is spontaneous and personal with thought provoking images and intuitive from the heart. Texture seems to be a big thing for Cost, because it is a thread running throughout every piece.
GRAPHIC DESIGN
In 1975, Steven Cost finished four years duty with the U. S. Navy and immediately went to work as the art director of Commercial Impression Advertising Agency in Pensacola, Florida. While in Pensacola he was a package designer for St. Regis Paper Company, and art directed for Creative Consultants Advertising. Major clients included Westinghouse Nuclear Energy, a desalination company that provided free water for several countries, University Mall, KATT Radio, Jacques Clousteau Marine Exploration, Balloon Safaris — a hot air balloon company, many retail stores, and Scuby Subs restaurants. He also finished his MA in Communication Arts at The University of West Florida where he studied video production and filmmaking.
While in Pensacola, Cost freelanced. After his Navy service, he stayed and was art director for Commercial Impressions Advertising, In 1993 he became the art director for the Amarillo Observer Magazine and designed for the publication for several years, one of the graphic design positions he enjoyed the most. For a while, Steven teamed up with son, Chris Cost, a videographer and animator, in producing television commercials. Cost continues to design and art direct in video, web, and print.
Philosophy
Steven believes that humans are just one of the many passengers on the planet in the universe, as opposed to being the masters. He is conservative as a conservationist, and he is conservative in that he is sentamental about historical things, family history especially. His is liberal in that he has a high regard for people and animals. He would prefer to save a forest than cut it down for profit. Education is very important to him and his hopes for others not only that we might better our selves, but also just for the understanding of our universe, knowledge and wisdom. He loves animals and trees and nature in general. Steven supports human rights, manners, sexual equality, democratic and progressive principles. He dislikes greed and strickly short term gains in business and industry that hurt people and the planet. Thank goodness for business, both big and small – but not at the expense of workers' rights. He supports unions. His philosophy of the after life, if we are indeed blessed with one, will be an experience beyond our imaginations and expectations. Views of peace and beauty in life are compatible with his art and other pursuits. You may not agree with Steven's philosophy, but what else would you expect from such an artist?
Cost sketching and sipping something at the Nasher Sculpture Gardens in Dallas.
