Stephen Scott Young is an American artist best known for his watercolor paintings and etchings that depict everyday life in the south of the United States and the Out Islands

Out Islands

The Out Islands is a name given to the islands that make up the Bahamas with the exception of New Providence Island and Grand Bahama Island. There are more than 700 islands in the archipelago that make up The Bahamas, but only 14 of the Out Islands are considered inhabited...

 of The Bahamas. Often focusing on themes including coming of age, class, race, and social conditions, Young's work is noted for its hyper-realist use of watercolor and eloquent simplicity of subject matter done in the American realist tradition

American realism

300px|thumb|[[Ashcan School]] artists & friends at [[John French Sloan]]'s Philadelphia Studio, 1898American realism was an early 20th century idea in art, music and literature that showed through these different types of work, reflections of the time period...

. Referred to as a master of copperplate etching, Young's strident attention to detail and intricacy are reminiscent of the "Old Masters," Caravaggio

Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta, and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His paintings, which combine a realistic observation of the human state, both physical and emotional, with a dramatic use of lighting, had a formative influence on the Baroque...

, Vermeer, Rembrandt and Whistler

James McNeill Whistler

James Abbott McNeill Whistler was an American-born, British-based artist. Averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, he was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger...

, whose influence is clear, while his use of light has brought him frequent comparison to other American realists Thomas Eakins

Thomas Eakins

Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator...

, Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer

Winslow Homer was an American landscape painter and printmaker, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a preeminent figure in American art....

, Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper was a prominent American realist painter and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching...

, and Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Newell Wyeth was a visual artist, primarily a realist painter, working predominantly in a regionalist style. He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century....

. Though the images he creates are often nostalgic, his work deals with contemporary issues and stands out as undeniably modernist. Art historian Henry Adams wrote of Young in the late 1980s: "He is like one of those prospectors who has gone back to the tailings of an abandoned mine and where others saw only useless rocks found quantities of untapped, undiscovered gold." He has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and has work in major American museums, including the Cleveland Museum of Art

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art is an art museum situated in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on Cleveland's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian art, the museum houses a diverse permanent collection of more than 43,000...

, the Greenville County Museum of Art

Greenville County Museum of Art

The Greenville County Museum of Art is an art museum located in Greenville, South Carolina. Its collections focus mainly on American art, and its holdings include works by Andrew Wyeth, Josef Albers, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Ronnie Landfield, Eric Fischl, Marylyn...

, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

The Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art opened in 1994 in Kansas City, Missouri. The core of the museum's permanent collection is the Bebe and R. Crosby Kemper Jr. Collection, a gift of the museum's founders. The collection includes works created after the 1913 Armory Show to works by present-day...

.

Biography

Young's first interest in art arrived during his childhood, when his mother gave him picture books of Caravaggio and Vermeer, to copy. When he was fourteen years old, his family moved to Gainesville, Florida. After graduating from high school, Young attended the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, where he was introduced to etchings and began to paint with watercolor. In 1985, Young won first prize in a national art competition held by American Artist magazine, marking the beginning of his career as an artist. Soon after, he traveled to the islands of The Bahamas, where he began to study light and paint the black figure, undertakings that shaped the rest of his career. He has painted rural scenes of everyday life from the northeast of the United States, the south, including South Carolina, Georgia and Florida, as well as his prolific career depicting life in The Bahamas.

He has been described as "A virtuoso realist in the classic tradition," and "an anomaly on the modern scene."

He is also one of the youngest living artists whose work was sold at both Christie's

Christie's

Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...

 and Sotheby's

Sotheby's

Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish...

auction houses.

Selected Exhibitions

"A Master Among Us" - Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Montgomery, Alabama, Shuptrine Fine Art, www.shuptrines.com

The Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN

The Greenville County Museum of Art, Greenville, SC

The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, FL

Museum of Art, Ft. Lauderdale, FL

The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR

The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH

The Jacksonville Art Museum, Jacksonville, FL

Adelson Galleries, New York, NY