Steve Duprey is a kind of Renaissance man of art. Now a popular local and regional painter and instructor, Duprey actually started his artistic career as a musician and doing high school theater. Born and raised in Waterloo, Steve has lived in the area for his entire life. Early in his career as an artist, he sang, played guitar and composed music, playing area gigs with his band. His high school theater experience grew into directing and then writing plays. Steve has directed over a hundred productions and has written a dozen plays. His play Women of a Certain Age is available through the ArtAge catalog and has been produced in Oklahoma and Florida as well as in Geneva.
Steve started painting seriously in 2010, when he turned fifty. Before then, his painting experience had been primarily painting sets for theater productions he was directing. (The staging of Women of a Certain Age in Geneva had a number of Steve Duprey original paintings on the walls of the “cabin” in which the play is set.) “Overall, my life has been pretty much all about the arts,” says Steve, “although I never took any classes in painting while I was in high school or college. I’m pretty much self-taught.”
Steve started teaching in his early 20s – first as a substitute teacher in high school and later in Finger Lakes Community College’s theater and communications department, where he worked until he retired about a year ago. He started teaching painting about 12 years ago as a side gig.
Early on in his painting career, Steve was known as “The Tree Guy.” As he honed his technique and became more experienced, Steve’s vision broadened and he focused more on landscapes — seeing the forest as well as the trees. “I find joy in everything I paint,” says Steve, “but I really do prefer plein air painting to any other style. I love the feeling of completing a landscape painting in one sitting. There is a freshness and an energy to those paintings that’s hard to match when you paint in your comfortable studio.”
While Steve has traveled to paint in other areas and other countries, he really considers himself to be a “homebody,” appreciating all the Finger Lakes have to offer. Steve has been teaching acrylic painting techniques regularly at both the Arts Center and the Dove Block Project in Geneva. He says it’s never too late to start painting! “I started at age fifty, never imagining that it would turn into a career…but here I am! As I tell my students, I can teach you the strokes, the difference between value and hue and chroma, but you have to bring the talent. Everyone has it in them. I love bringing it out of them!”