Photo Paintings by Steve Patchin

ArtBusCoffee.com
Steve Patchin is a photographer and digital artist who has been working and running a studio in Las Vegas for more than 20 years. When not making purely photographic images, he uses a digital production approach that involves an intense focus on detail, with layering and compositing that build depth, whether the end result is simple or complex. This gives his pictures a level of realism even when the subjects or situations in them are far from realistic. Steve is the owner of Patchin Pictures as well as Art Bus Coffee.
Steve has owned and operated his photography and video business, Patchin Pictures, since 1997, winning eight Emmys for his work. He also owns and operates Art Bus Coffee, a unique mobile venue where he displays his artwork. Steve has never stopped expanding and refining his art and photography. His resume of images displays an abundance of styles and subjects that are uniquely appealing, from traditional landscapes and cityscapes to his distinctive “photo paintings” that are more expressionistic, sometimes surreal, or other-worldly.
Steve’s newest art-related project is Art Bus Coffee, a business he started in 2017. It is a mobile coffee shop and art gallery in an English double decker bus. While researching ideas for presenting art to the public so more people can experience it, Steve realized that the best way to reach more people would be to take the art to them. That’s where the idea, and thus the business, began. Seeing actual, physical art in person is very different than looking at it on a computer screen or a phone, but how can people know this if they haven’t experienced the difference? And shuffling through an art gallery isn’t always convenient or appealing. The access to art needs to be easy, and people need time to relax and enjoy it. Thus, Steve designed Art Bus Coffee so he could bring the art directly to people, and they could get an espresso, go up to the second level of the bus, and relax among the artwork. Steve says, “The satisfaction of tasting a good cup of coffee or espresso is very much like the satisfaction of seeing good works of art: they both feel right. And what better way to do both at the same time than having a coffee and experiencing art on a classic, English, double decker bus?”
The positive response from people seeing and buying Steve’s more stylized artwork has been surprising even to Steve. “I create pictures that interest me, making stylish changes to, and blending, my original photos in order to reveal the feelings, ideas and stories I would want to spend time exploring if they were presented to me as pictures someone else wanted me to hang on my walls,” says Steve. “Unless it’s for a commission, I don’t try to make the pictures suit what I think someone else will like.” And so the surprise comes when people feel something for the pictures and show a connection to what Steve felt in creating them. “Sometimes, I’ll finish a picture and think that I’ll be the only one who will ever be drawn to it, so when people buy those pictures, I realize I’m making connections with others by holding true to what feels right to me. In this, art and life become the same thing.”
Contact Steve Patchin:
PatchinPictures...
ArtBusCoffee.com