Madison Magazine Jan '08 Issue written by Katie Vaughn

Un-still Life. Steve Dwyer used to make art for others. The Madison native, trained at both the Art

Institute of Chicago and UW-Madison- deftly painted still lifes., flowers and other "pleasant" images

people would want to hang on their walls.

Then he decided to paint for himself.

"I wanted to portray what my life was about, my loves, my fears, my hates", he says. "I started to

care less about selling and more about telling a story in my paintings."

The result is a varied collection of oil paintings that depict his son skateboarding as readily as they

take up past loves or scenes from his hometown.

Several of Dwyer's works delve into personal symbolism. "Rebirth"-which features a black funnel

cloud approaching a boy seated in the foreground-puts onto canvas a tornado that has chased the

artist in nightmares since childhood. Yet such imagery is accessible to anyone, he says.

"The tornado could be a symbol of something else, such as the bully that picked on you as a child,

that one teacher that scared you so much you didn't want to go to school, the one thing in life that

scares you the most," he says. In the painting I am seen calmly confronting my greatest fear. It's a

crossroads of growing and moving forward in life."