Let There Be

When you are born an artist, with a way of seeing, a way of experiencing the world in color and light, you know. Way back in the fourth grade, Stephen Duren knew that he was meant to be a painter.

He grew up without a father in Northern California, spending precious time outdoors with his grandfather and comforted by the amber light of the big sky and treetops of the Sacramento Valley. Duren’s 60year career as a painter began there, at his grandfather’s ranch in Vacaville.

He kept drawing during a stint on a Navy destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War, later as staff artist for the American Forces Radio & TV station in Guantanamo, and during his final military stint, in Italy, where he says a Van Gogh exhibit “was a religious experience.”

Duren returned to Northern California as a student at the San Francisco Art Institute and then received his masters at Sacramento State University; he developed a love of 19th-century European painting, with his early

Opening spread, left to right:

“This is one of my favorite paintings overlooking Grand Traverse Bay, possibly because it mimics the bittersweet light of my childhood stomping grounds in northern California.”

“This is a double portrait of our dog, Sophie, and myself. If you look closely, you will see Sophie through my studio window.” –Stephen Duren

Above:

“I created two paintings of this Leelanau Peninsula orchard. I lost track of the second painting, which included a small dog. I never met a dog I did not want to pet.

Opposite: “During inclement weather, I sometimes painted from inside my van as I did for this view looking east across Lake Leelanau.

“Long-time friends and collectors Jim and Marie Preston enjoy this view from their cottage. Their generosity afforded me the same opportunity so many times that I’ve come to call it my cottage.” –Stephen Duren studies echoing the everyday scenes and bold form and colors of Intimist painters like Pierre Bonnard. To help pay his college tuition, Duren hustled sketches of local sites to tourists as one of the city’s first licensed street artists. Each sold for only $10.

After his studies, Duren landed as an art teacher in West Michigan in 1978—a culture shock from psychedelic San Fran’s counter-cultural environment. He taught for six years before dedicating himself to his art full time, often painting en plein air and finishing his pieces back in his studio.

These landscapes caught the eye of collectors; Duren credits Jim Preston, who owns a home on the Leelanau Peninsula with his wife, Marie, for igniting his career in the mid-1980s. Preston had seen a show of Duren’s California landscapes at Grand Rapids’ Urban Institute for Contemporary Art and fell in love with his semi-abstract style and the similarity to the scenery of Leelanau. He wondered if Duren could create a number of paintings there.

“The deal we made,” Preston says, “was to allow Stephen and his wife, Victoria, to use our home, and that Marie and I had first choice of the paintings. He painted twenty-five, and we ultimately bought twenty-one.” They’ve been dear friends ever since.

That stay in Leelanau County was life-changing. “I was converted,” Duren says. “It very much took me back to [my time in] California. It’s one of a few places in Michigan that is not a grid.” He also notes that the Leelanau Peninsula is at the same latitude as Northern California, and the two regions share that amber, bittersweet light.

“My creative side only happens for an hour and a half at a time,” says Duren, now 75, whose studio is in an aged barn in Caledonia near Grand Rapids.

“I have one rule when I paint: I allow the painting to have a say in what I do.”

His remarkable career is being honored this year at two Michigan shows featuring different aspects of Duren’s work: Grand Valley State University’s Allendale Campus, Aug. 28 through Nov. 3, and Traverse City’s Dennos Museum Center, Sept. 17 through Jan. 7, 2024.

Patty LaNoue Stearns is a longtime Michigan journalist, editor and author. pattywrites.com

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“A private collector commissioned composer Nico Muhly and me to respond creatively to this area overlooking Little Traverse Lake. We met with the collectors four times in one year. Nico was a precocious kid at the time working with Philip Glass. He went on, of course, to become the celebrated American contemporary composer he is today.”

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“I have done several paintings from East Dufek Road, reflecting the peninsula’s transition from orchards to vineyards.” –Stephen Duren

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