Born in San Diego in 1971 and raised along the California coast, Steve Quartly uses the beauty in which he grew up to inspire his remarkable paintings. As a child, Quartly struggled with dyslexia in school, so his parents encouraged him to expand his horizons to the arts, including music, theatre, and painting. When he was thirteen years old, he enrolled in an oil painting class, and began his love affair with the medium. Quartly studied there for five years while also painting in his parents’ attic-turned-studio, where he painted portraits landscapes for his neighbors and flowers for his sister. Quartly eventually enrolled at Azusa Pacific University, from which he graduated with a BA in Fine Art in 1996.

Since his graduation, Quartly has continued to refine his style, often through the appreciation of other artists. Some of his favorite painters include Tom Swimm, Rembrandt, Charles W. Mundy, Howard Behrens, and James Coleman. Quartly’s own style is impressionistic paintings of cityscapes, landscapes, and seascapes with a personal warmth and mystery. Primarily painting with oils on canvas, he often paints en plein air or bases his pieces on sketches or photographs he has taken. He is deeply inspired by the many travels he has taken alone and with his wife in California and around Europe and England. The most impressive aspect of his work is the combination of carefully designed composition and color choices applied in the early stages of his work and the passionate, free-flowing brush strokes and use of the palette knife that evolve as he paints each pieces. This combination reflects his own personality, as he explains, “I do tend to be a melancholy type of personality, so there is a little bit of mystery to my paintings. Yet, I want to convey a happy feeling – joy and hope. There is a lot of negativity in the world and, as artists, I believe we have a duty to bring hope into people’s lives.”