Stephen Altena
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  • In The Shadow Garden
  • Quarantine Garden 2020
  • Paintings 2020
  • Upper Canadian Living: Montgomery's Inn 2019
  • Mckenzie House (2019)
  • Springtime (2019)
  • Winter Garden (2019)
  • The Miss Philippa Savary Residency, Elton House, Bath UK (2018)
  • In Bloom (2018)
  • Another Spring (2018)
  • Luxury Scarves (2016)
  • Wallpaper (2016)
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Pretty Things
Stephen Altena
The Assembly Gallery at RedChurch Cafe
December 1-23 2021

​Artist Statement


While growing up on his parents dairy farm in rural Hamilton, young Stephen Altena dreamed of Pretty Things. The Victorian farmhouse of his childhood with its pressed tin ceilings, patterned wallpapers and china cabinet brimming with ornamental ‘fancies’ informed his youthful aesthetic.
The imbued life of these objects and decorative flourishes instilled in Altena an appreciation for the language of ornament and the emotional balm of the arts and now extends a bridge into his past with its moments of beauty and simple pleasures. Whether through luscious oil paints, delicate coloured pencil drawings or through dreamlike multi layered screen prints Altena evokes a world of delight, an appreciation of pattern and decoration and the fragile and wistful revery of a queer childhood spent dreaming of pretty things.
 
Summer. 2021, screen print on Stonehenge paper, 11x14 inches. edition of 10. 
$185 each
Pansy. 2021, screen print on Stonehenge paper, 11x14 inches. edition of 10
$185 each
  • Home
  • Pretty Things 2021
  • In The Shadow Garden
  • Quarantine Garden 2020
  • Paintings 2020
  • Upper Canadian Living: Montgomery's Inn 2019
  • Mckenzie House (2019)
  • Springtime (2019)
  • Winter Garden (2019)
  • The Miss Philippa Savary Residency, Elton House, Bath UK (2018)
  • In Bloom (2018)
  • Another Spring (2018)
  • Luxury Scarves (2016)
  • Wallpaper (2016)
  • Artist CV
  • About