About the Artist
Steve Crane
“While talent has its place, it’s the life-long study, cumulative knowledge and regular practice that produces fine art.”
Steve Crane is best known for his landscapes that include an emphasis on the architecture of interesting and historical buildings and places, many in northern California. While the structures many not last, the paintings will.
Born in Washington State in 1953, his family moved to southern California soon thereafter. Raised in the foothills of 11,500’ Mt. San Gorgonio he came to love the fruit orchards and horse and cattle ranches of the area. Early artistic influences included Charles Russell and Frederick Remington.
In 1976 he moved to the southern California high desert and began work for the US Marine Corps as a civilian in Barstow. Later that year he and his wife of 42 years, Candy, were married. After 15 years with the USMC he moved on to a 25 year career with Pacific Gas & Electric company working on the high pressure gas pipelines in southern and northern California, retiring in 2016. He has been an Orland resident for the last 21 years.
In 2011, at the urging of renowned realist painter George Molnar, (a childhood friend), he and Candy attended the Grand Canyon Celebration of Art on the South Rim of Grand Canyon. It was there that he first attempted to put brush to canvas. Thoroughly intimidated, unskilled and overmatched by the breathtaking vistas and changing light, he managed only a bit of blue sky in the upper corner of the blank white canvas. But, he was hooked!
Over the next year he worked on the painting and attended a night class at Chico Art School with Janet Lombardi Blixt and finally finished that first 12” x 16” effort that now hangs in his studio as a reminder of progress made.
