Steve Locke

Gallery Affiliations: Samson

Region: Northeast

My work explores relationships between and among men. I reveal the exchange of looks to examine the ways men respond, desire, and relate to each other.

My sources are varied—observational practice, movies, pornography, web surfing—basically I see someone and draw him. These drawings function as notes about a particular person or encounter. They document something about the men I have seen—their strength, beauty, cruelty, cowardice, energy, power, clothing—that I find compelling enough to draw and take back to my studio. Arrangement of paintings are created to expose the economy of gazes that can be suggested from images in proximity and the frisson that comes from the pleasure of looking and being seen. Placement, distance from the wall, directionality of the gaze and color applied to the back of some of the panels can be read as indicators of the position of the characters in the paintings. I am after a poetic investigation of the distances between men, large and small.