My name is Stephen Macias, I grew up and live in Northern California with my wife Jaime and our two beautiful sons Xavier and Isaac. 

I can't remember a time in my life that art wasn't the most important thing....not always in the forefront of my life...but always there. Being an artist is not something you turn on and off. Being an artist is not a hobby, it is not something that you can decide to be, or not to be. I have always seen the world through the lens of an artist. Finding the beauty in all things, people, and situations, acting as a mirror for the soul, human nature, and life itself. With this definition of an artist, I have never stopped being one. 

My art is original and features multiple subject matters. The Cocoui is a character I created in art school over 20 years ago, along with the Buddha Monk, Cisco and his friends, metaphorically representing the right of passage, the process one takes to become an adult. What the late Joseph Campbell called the Hero's Journey. They are all characters in a graphic novel I am currently writing.

Another big inspiration for my art is music, and my playlist are quite eclectic. My father started me off right, I have great memories of watching my dad paint one of his signs while listening to all the great music from the 50's but his greatest gift to my playlist rotation were the Blues. B.B. King, Howlin Wolf, Muddy Waters, and my favorite Robert Johnson. I grew up in the 80's and 90's, the Golden Age of Hip Hop! another big influence for my art. I can go on and on; Classic Rock, Bob Marley, Mozart, all good music takes me to a special creative place. Sometimes it's the lyrics that inspire an image in my imagination. Sometimes it's the music itself that inspires the colors and shapes I see, the mood and feeling I want to capture and share.

Another big influence in my artistic world was Disney and comic books. When I was 6 years old my family went to Disneyland and along Main Street in one of the storefronts there were some animators working on some Disney art and animation cells. I remember being amazed at watching the artist drawing and painting all those Disney characters and I knew right then and there I wanted to do that for the rest of my life. Then when I was 13 a friend of mine showed me my first Marvel comic book,  The Mighty Thor #394 penciled by Ron Frenz. This was like  nothing I had seen before, the cover was magnificent! It was a close up of Thor swinging his hammer while the winds whirled around him like a tornado. Half of his face was brightly lit and full of emotion, the lines, the movement, was all amazing. Till this day I love comics, go to comic conventions, and am still pursuing a dream of mine to self publish a graphic novel featuring many of the characters you see in my work featured on this site.  

The last bit of subject matter for my art could be best described as life's mirror; in the great words of Oscar Wilde; "All art is quite useless. Art is useless because its aim is simply to create a mood. It is not meant to instruct, or to influence action in any way. It is superbly sterile, and the note of its pleasure is sterility. A work of art is useless as a flower is useless. A flower blossoms for its own joy. We gain a moment of joy by looking at it. That is all that is to be said about our relations to flowers." When I taught art in High School I would often tell my students that you can not stop the magic that happens when you create a work of art. The magic is that a piece of you somehow transfers over into the work of art for all to see, but the true great artist are able to limit how much of your finger prints are left on the art work and allows enough room in there for others to insert themselves...so that..."...we gain a moment of joy by looking at it."

Thanks for visiting my site, enjoy looking at my art and please sign up for my newsletter so you can stay up to date with all my latest works of art.