Louis Stifter
The Art Club is very pleased to award Louis Stifter our Artist of the Month for March. Louis is a retired electrical engineer who has lived in PebbleCreek for nine years. He came to Arizona from his home of 22 years in the California San Francisco Bay Area. While he considers himself a Californian, his home is here in Goodyear because his family was military and his contract engineering work took him so many places in the western U.S. that he was never in any place for long. He has also lived in Japan and has visited about 25 foreign countries.
Louis has been a member of the PebbleCreek Art Club for six years and is currently in his second term as the PebbleCreek Art Club Vice President Education – Classes handling all the art class information on the club website. In addition to his art club activities Louis belongs to the PebbleCreek Learning Spanish Club where he is in the advanced class.
His background in art began in about 1973 when he bought some oil paints and just started painting. In about 1979 he studied under artist Robert Garden in a course sponsored by the Robert Garden School of Art. The class painted a seascape and a landscape without cleaning the brush. During the 1980s Louis ventured into watercolors and had a picture juried into a show in Walnut Creek, California.
After a hiatus of about 20 years, Louis returned to painting via a basic acrylics class taught by PebbleCreek artist Judy Hale. Eventually, one of his acrylic still life pictures earned an award at one of the community Meet the Artist events.
Subsequently, while still working in acrylics, Louis returned to oil painting and continued developing his techniques and style in PebbleCreek Art Club classes instructed by Arizona artists David Flitner, Malcolm Blazer, Nancy Troupe and Gerald Schwartz. Louis prefers landscape painting and one of his pieces in oils earned an award at one of the PebbleCreek Art Club Artwalk events.
Inspired by Monument Valley and Saguaro National Monument, Louis paints mostly desert landscapes with soft edges and Sfumato style blending of colors, but sometimes ventures into snowscapes with pine forests. In many of his pictures, trails add drama and curiosity about what may be around the next bend or over the next hill. Saguaros and the totem pole in Monument Valley are favorite subjects. In his work, Louis projects a feeling of what he calls reflective solitude.
In addition to his landscape painting Louis has painted some still life with various kinds of vessels in Chiaroscuro style and studies perspective and the technical aspects of color theory and mixing.
Remember, he says, “As Malcolm Blazer has told us, ‘It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be not wrong.’”
Louis’s picture Reach for the Sky will appear in the Eagle’s Nest Clubhouse and Snowy Solitude will appear in the Tuscany Falls Clubhouse. You are invited to view additional paintings on display in the Creative Arts Center.