Many of the highways and expressways which cut across our country, along with their bordering
landscapes, were intentionally designed to provide a variety of visual experiences, not merely for
our pleasure as drivers, but in order to keep us alert. The paintings of Stephen Duren possess a similar
function. They provide visual pleasure, yet this seems to be but a strategy to keep us at attention.

Stephen Duren has covered a lot of ground in his career as a painter of landscapes and interiors.
He connects into an art historical tradition of translating natural and manmade spaces into shapes,
lines, and colors - continuing the honorable work of artists like Pierre Bonnard, Richard Diebenkorn,
and Wolf Kahn. Although this is a romantic practice, and perhaps anyone making a painting today
is romantic in some sense, Duren pushes and pulls at this depiction of romance, avoiding the pratfalls
of stereotype.