Canadian Painter Steve Mitts
My name is Steve Mitts – welcome!
My artistic practice is a fusion of Renaissance style acrylic painting, collage, relief sculpture, and the reclamation of old materials. It’s a compelling dialogue between my dual passions: woodworking and acrylic painting.
I’m less interested in chasing the new, than re-imagining what already exists: to find fresh life and meaning in what has been here all along.
A New Renaissance:
Influences from Mantegna to Raphael
I’ve always been drawn to the visual language of the Italian Renaissance.
My work is inspired by the careful compositions, symbolism, and deep respect for craftsmanship from the Greats of that time: Mantegan, Bellini, Titian and Raphael.
Although centuries separate us from that time, the emotions, struggles, and stories feel surprisingly familiar, and continue to guide the way I paint and build each piece.
My practice translates contemporary states of being, uncertainty, endurance, reflection, and vulnerability, into forms grounded in that history. The past is an active lens that helps me to better understand and interpret the world around me.
From the University of Calgary to Reflections on Alberta’s History
After graduating from the University of Calgary in 1994, I began exploring how those older ways of seeing could still speak to our lives today.
By repurposing salvaged barn wood from hundred-year old Alberta grain silos, each piece is further informed by the weathered history of the prairies.
Across everything I make weathered wood, reused surfaces, and layered imagery become both material and metaphor – speaking to endurance, change, and continuity.
Available for Custom Commissions and Exhibitions
For more than thirty years I’ve carried this approach across many formats and spaces.
My work has been exhibited in public and commercial galleries, held in private and institutional collections, and realized through site-specific public commissions of large mural installations or integrated into historic architecture.
Whether I’m working on an intimate panel or at an architectural scale – I remain guided by the character of the materials and the story of the site itself.
