Meet Stephen — Mad genius & Illustrator at large
Name: Stephen Petronis
Occupation: Artist, Illustrator, Art Director
Resides: Brooklyn, NYC
When did you start drawing?
Before I can remember. There are home videos of me drawing witches and getting scared outta my chair. My favorite thing to draw as a kid were “murder tunnels”. Analog video games. The first thing I remember drawing and thinking “Whoa! I might have something here!” was a bear.
Your style is pretty eclectic. Spanning over classical oil painting-style, pop-art portraits, Manga-inspired fantastical, religious iconic portraits, and what can only be described as animated craziness — why do you think that is?
It’s all the same thing. I have a huge aversion FOMO. I don’t think I am here to be a master of this or that. I do it for the fun of it. More about appreciating. Because it’s all part of the human collective. It’s our primal brain communicating with alien intelligence.
Have you always been drawing or has there been breaks?
I think it is like any other hobby. Starts out as a curiosity- fun thing. The deeper you get in the more you learn and then you’re deep in there. Then you start finding mentors. I was lucky enough to find one in my friend Tommy Kane. He is a master of his craft, he is honest and more importantly always humble.
But yea as I get older I learn to evaluate time very efficiently. It’s the only commodity. I think that also dictates the crazy style twist. It’s because I don’t have a single ritual. I don’t go into a studio and evoke a spirit and do a certain ritual to express myself. I am always on or I am sleeping. I have adaptations to the environment. A lot of the brush pen watercolor is because I am standing on a subway and it allows room for error. Then you have the iPad which you can draw and ditch without repercussions. So it’s like some weird matrix training program. Meeting doodles. So it’s just “what do I have where I am” to feed the addiction. But i am now at an age where I can say one hour of video games make you very good at video games, but one hour of drawing makes you better at drawing.
Check out all Stephen’s featured work here: https://medium.com/essntls/random-acts-of-creativity-fa12644e933c
You publish a lot of work on Instagram. Why did you choose Instagram as your main outlet channel?
I like it because the feed is a curation of what you want. You make your own magazine. So then I post there. Facebook is broken and I’m too lazy to fix it. And as for the other stuff I am just not organized enough to figure them out. So.. laziness.
Your main profession is in the communications industry as what can only be described as “Executive Art Director at large” where you have transitioned from freelance to basically having your own clients. Is this you starting an agency?
For me, Advertising is a job, not an outlet. Luckily a job that lets me sharpen my skills. I didn’t want to be a starving artist. Or have to prostitute my art to make a buck. So the industry is shifting and me and my partner Tucker Loosbrock sorta watched it and then he convinced me to take the leap. And once we were free everything became simple. My professional life got sharper and I get so much more out of my time. Maybe it’s a gemini thing but I can live two separate lives and I am all the happier. Like Mister Rogers coming home and switching his shoes.
In the future, do you see yourself commercializing your art as an illustrator for brands and/or clients or would you rather it stay art and maybe commercializing that in time?
One day I was sitting in an ad agency getting paid what I thought was an ungodly amount of money to look through a list of influencers that might be good for a brand to partner with. To see how I made pennies compared to these influencers. So I would love to be able to keep the separate lives where there is a Steve that works with brands loosely to incorporate my artist brand for their work. And then always having a private experimental exploration pure Joy-of-creation-Steve.
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