Stephen Bend

With a dominance of subdued hues and tones, Passion Ascending could be mistakenly viewed as a melancholy piece. However, Stephen employs a synesthetic approach to colour—particularly the primary colours—where red represents passion/love, blue the intellect, and yellow physical presence. Using an expressive interplay of lines, symbols, and colour—manipulated and moderated into varying hues, tints, and chromatic intensities through his modified ‘sfumato layered technique’—Stephen presents an introspective and reflective expression of love and passion that has matured and continues to grow over time.

Born and educated in England, but settled in Canada for many years, Stephen is inspired by a broad range of influences, including music, science, nature, and diverse artistic styles. As an introspective, emotive abstractionist, he arranges colour into antagonistic or accordant shapes, symbols, and lines, creating an interplay of form and colour that evokes a sense of tension, movement, security, passion, joy, loss, or isolation—an expressionistic and non-objective representation of pure emotion.