Trefonides Exhibition Catalogue

Steven
Trefonides:
Secrets

Steven Trefonides:
Secrets
A Catalogue to accompany an exhibition
held at the
Tides Institute & Museum of Art
Eastport, Maine
August 18 - September 18
Curated by: Martha Lewis
Cover: Two Girls in Tree, Framed charcoal drawing, 2000

“Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life . . . Life holds the mirror up to
Art, and either reproduces some strange type imagined by a painter or sculptor, or
realises in fact what has been dreamed in fiction. . . . For what is Nature? Nature
is no great mother who has borne us. She is our creation. It is in our brain that she
quickens to life. Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see
it, depends on the Arts that have influenced us. . . . At present, people see fogs, not
because there are fogs, but because poets and painters have taught them the mysterious
loveliness of such effects. There may have been fogs for centuries in London. I
dare say there were. But no one saw them, and so we do not know anything about
them. They did not exist till Art had invented them. Now, it must be admitted,
fogs are carried to excess. They have become the mere mannerism of a clique, and
the exaggerated realism of their method gives dull people bronchitis. Where the
cultured catch an effect, the uncultured catch cold. “
~Oscar Wilde, ‘The Decay of Lying: An Observation’, 1889 1
I have a strong visual memory from sometime
in the 70’s, of standing and looking at the objects propped on a mantelpiece in
the Trefonides’ South End house. The long white marble mantle had a couple of
vintage photographs resting on it, portraits. Old, detailed images of men in strange
heavy clothes obviously a part of another world and time. One in particular
riveted me: his craggy gaunt face, the hooded eyes. Every detail was there-craters
and pocks and hairs, in forensic detail. It was so intimate, as if he were a neighbor
or visitor, who could stop by for at any moment.
I am not sure how or where Steve got this photograph of Abraham Lincoln, but
this was my first experience of the historic past as a living reality. Cozied up to
this startling image was a series of ordinary objects, small clutter: playing cards,
toothpicks, a clock or maybe candle and some beautiful delicate things from India,
various bits from a multitude of times and places all as concrete as myself.
Is this memory accurate or have I embroidered on it over time, altering it with each
re-visitation into a fiction I truly believe?
Probably both.
This visual syncretism, an eclectic merging of past with the now, comes back to me as I sit
here writing this essay on Trefonides’ work,
as an emblematic image. It seems poignant
when considering his complex and detailed
works presented here in this show.
The mantle for me acts like a maquette of the
dynamic which takes place in his images:
dramas which include layered presences,
figures from old photographs, real and
imagined, shuffling among ordinary things in
places that blend and shift their
references. The eroding strata of meanings,
colors and surfaces merge into unique wholes
that defy explanation.
Certain words come to mind again and again
when looking over Steven Trefonides’s oeuvre:
rich, detailed, sensual, intricate, loaded.
Essayist William
Corbett writes of his work:
“At times I thought of him as
Love in the Bathroom
a conjurer…shifting weather often
surrounds, like smoke, the images that Framed woodcut print | 29” H x 32 7/8” W | 1968
form in a Trefonides. His pictures have
a dream-like clarity and the muzziness,
the unconscious we are in when we are dreaming. That is a way of saying that the quality of
Trefonides’s imagination, as sensuous and peculiar as one could ask for, is always on view in
his work.” 1
1 Wilde, Oscar. The Decay of Lying. 1891.
as published in his book Intentions
1 Corbett, William. “Creiger-Dane Gallery Show.” Artmedia Magazine.

“Timelessness” was once thought to be an essential ingredient to great art. 1 Like the
eternal cycles on a Greek vase, our collective being and recursive dramas were what
counted. Archetypes, Truth with a capitalized “T,” Universal dramas, religious and
secular, were everything; they drove the Renaissance, neoclassicism, the academy with
a capitalized “A.” Then, around the 19th
century, perception swung 360 degrees the
other way: to be interesting, one had to evoke
one’s era, location, culture, its discontents and
social morays. One was nothing as an artist
who did not reflect their time with a gimlet
eye. The particular became essential. Details of
technology, dress, and behavior: the Flaneur in
the city became the ideal 2 for the images artists
produced for their audiences.
Both approaches traffic in the subtext of sex
and mortality and Steven Trefonides puts it all
in there: archetypes, real people, a pell-mell of
images and scenes that have attracted him, in
unsettling settings. Like real dreams or
fairytales, there is often a menace below the
surface, people cluster in groups but stay alone,
and eye each other jealously. These are liminal
spaces, and Something is always about to
happen.
Embrace
Framed oil on paper | 39 1/8” H x 31 1/2”
W | 1987
Steven Trefonides was one of my first examples of a professional artist but I didn’t
have context, didn’t know about what the other artists were doing-the Boston
Expressionists, for example-or why that work would be different from the art coming
out of New York in the 60’s and 70’s, where Abstract Expressionism morphed into
Minimalism and Pop, away from ”post-war figuration”. 3 Now his nuanced, moody
dramas seem to make sense with the whole zeitgeist of the Boston art scene, with its
celebration of personal narrative and its resistance to minimalism.
Boston was a magnet to an international, intellectual crowd, with a thriving art scene
of galleries, artists, schools and museums. The artists were eclectic and loosely knit
– a band of individuals, collective mainly in the sense that they were all somewhat
reclusive individualists, and that they were all committed and intent on their personal
vision.
Trefonides’ own relationships with various artists- Hyman Bloom, Nina
Bohlen, David Aronson, answer certain questions: these sets of interests
were not born out of a vacuum, yet Trefonides’ work has a unique humor
and psychological drama that is all his own. He was younger than the
core of the Boston Expressionists, and is generally considered to be from
the second generation of BE artists, mostly graduates from the Boston
Museum School under the influence of teacher Karl Zerbe. But they all
did know each other, spend time together, and there is a synergy: that’s
important to the story too: it was this community which drifted up north
and congregated in the cool of Lubec. It’s central, in fact, to the story of
how the Trefonides family came to be in Lubec for the summers, and
how, in turn, Lubec came to be important to his work; the landscapes and
spaces working their way into his intricate dramas.
It was Nina 1 that had brought Hyman 2 to Lubec, and then later Steve
and Phyllis, and others. The first time, they stayed at Nina’s while she was
away. The next year, they rented a place for themselves and Steve drew
with charcoal on a large sheet of paper pinned to the dining room wall.
“Nude in Hammock” was his first large work made in Lubec.
Nude in Hammock
Framed charcoal drawing | 48” W x 48” H | 1966
Th
t
s
h
1 Keats, John. “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” In The Poetical Works of John Keats. 1884.
2 Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life. 1863.
3 This term usually refers to Art in Britain after the war- but also applies to
American artists like Ben Shahn, Phillip Guston, The Ashcan School, and others.
1 “Nina Bohlen - Artist.” Nina Bohlen. Accessed July 2016. http://
ninabohlenart.com/.
2 “Hyman Bloom.” Hyman Bloom. Accessed July 2016. http://www.
hymanbloom.com/.

Something about the place spoke to them both, and in 1968 when he won
the Blanche Colman Prize for Painting they took the money and got a
place of their own. Houses were plentiful and cheap, plus Phyllis was
gifted: She had always been able to find the most wonderful housesbargains
with remarkable features. Once they got the white house with its
yard and old tree they set up there for every summer from then until now,
packing children and supplies into a blue VW bus, making the journey
from the South End and the sweat of urban Boston summers to the far
end of Maine.
In the 1960s, Lubec began to have a summer art scene with a flow of city
visitors and locals cooking out on the beaches, sharing food and life. Lois
and Ryerson Johnson 1 instigated parties, and there were tides of visiting
artists. It made sense that many of them became seasonal migrants, prices
were low, space was available. Steven Trefonides, Hyman Bloom and Nina
Bohlen, Paul Caponigro, Marie Cosindas, Harold Tovish, Kahlil George
Gibran, Marianna Pineda, Iso Papo, and many others all came through,
spending time and working. For this exhibit we have featured a selection of
their output on the second floor gallery: Bohlen’s luminous mono-printed
trees, Bloom’s tumultuous piles of rubble, Caponigro’s
cathedral-like forests. We have works owned by Trefonides by Bloom and
Bohlen which echo his own sensibilities. There is something special about
seeing works artists give each other, works they surround themselves with.
These are plein-air observations which sometimes make their way into his
studio work, and we also have some examples of the
stereopticon slides and early photographs in his collection that so fascinate
him; frozen, often funny, moments from the past that echo throughout
his oeuvre. This is being paired with the Tides Institute’s own collection of
such images- which feature scenes of Cobscook Bay, Machias, Eastport,
Lubec. All of this is to give a more in depth-perhaps secret-glimpse into
the role time, place and circumstance play in the creative life of the artist.
End of The World
Unframed ink on paper | 14” W x 11” H | 1962
Two Girls in Tree
Framed charcoal drawing | 36 1/3” W x 28 3/4” H | 2000
1 Lois Johnson, an illustrator, and her husband, pulp-fiction author Ryerson,
were famous for their parties

Despite the groups’ scorn for the stereotypic “Maine Landscape” genre, the
environment and the culture of the place seeped into their work as if by osmosis:
tangled woods, coastlines, filtered dappled light all feature. Steve may not be a
landscape painter, and rocky shores and mossy forests are not his subject matter,
but the years of drawing here, living here, sleeping here, dreaming here, the long
summers spent working outside and in the studio have meant that the place and
its particularities permeate his work, appearing as naturally as the sly and
sophisticated people who inhabit his images.
Lubec Wall
Matted unframed ink drawing over
black chalk | 23 3/4” W x 18 1/2” H
| 1970
Fact and fiction meld, characters
reappear-women in trees, card
players, men fighting, poets and
their admirers-again and again
mixing and remixing like the flow
of guests at a cocktail party. The
spaces they inhabit are familiar and
fraught-dark antique looking
bathrooms, fields at sunset or
dawn, tangled woodlands, rocky
outcroppings near ponds. There is
a combination of innocence and
experience-operators and ingénues
in his troupe of players. As art critic
Sebastian Smee put it in his
Introduction to Trefonides’ 2012
exhibit Through the Looking Glass:
“his forms of pictorial dreaming
have a frictionless quality, a “
perhaps this, but why not that?”
aspect, that keeps him-and us-on our
toes.” 1
Firefly Green
Framed pastel on paper | 32” H x 26” W | 1996
His sensibility is grounded in turn-of-the-century French avante garde
painting and in the history of photography. The early uses of photography as a
means for telling of jokes 2 or as erotica, or as a form of travel-all permeate the
worlds he creates within his images.““ we used to go rummaging through the
junkshops at the North station”,…” I’ll never forget my excitement at first
coming across a stack of stereopticon slides of Victorian Egypt. Some of these
images have haunted me ever since.”” 3
Quoddy Head
Unframed black ink on paper | 14” W x 11” H | 1973
1 Smee, Sebastian. “Smee Introduction to Through the Looking Glass . Botolph
Club Catalog, 2012.
2 See: L’Arroseur Arrosé. Directed by Louis Lumière and Auguste Lumière.
Performed by Benoît Duval and François Clerc. France, June 10, 1895. Film.
3 Taylor, Robert. “The Haunting of Steven Trefonides.” Boston Globe, March 25,
1980.

As an artist, he moves masterfully, flexibly, between drawing, painting,
printmaking and pastel. Strains of Vuillard, Degas, Watteau, Bonnard and
Goya filter in and out. The colors in Trefonides works are pungent and
intense, with rich dark masses and layers, and surprising citrusy punches.
He was drawn to, in the words of Maria Morris Hambourg, "The haunting
power of photographs to commingle past and present, to suspend the world
and the artist's experience of it in unique distillations.” 1
Like the impressionists before him, he uses photography with its
unpredictable framing and blurs to inform his compositions, unlike the
impressionists, he uses photography as an independent art-form going back
and forth between media, without complex.
“Indeed, you can feel the influence of photography in his love for strange
body postures and in his resistance to conventional compositions.
Trefonides embraces the arbitrariness of the camera’s framing, so that, for
instance, two figures will overlap, even while a significant portion of the
picture remains empty.” 2
For Secrets, we wanted to get a closer look at the way he works and reworks
his cast of players and imagery, honing his subjects, recontextualizing them,
moving with them around over time. They might dress differently but we
get to know them-they reappear in slightly altered guises. Trefonides has
said that the role of costumes in his work: “partly that comes from the old
photographs; but partly, too from my interest in social roles. The
characters who are dressing up in these visual dramas are obviously
assuming a role….” 1 They are detailed and ambiguous, drawing the viewer
in-to spend time in what is clearly an existential drama, a theater of being.
He “takes on the manner of a diviner, picking up vibrations, subterranean
whispers.” 2 “ The Spell,” a work in which those vibrations and whispers are
particularly disturbing and palpable, gets shown here in three versions using
three very different media, offering a change to really look at what makes
the works tick and examine where their unique power comes from.
Both photography and painting are a form of observation, both capture our
shadowy realities, and reveal what we wish to mask, our lurking fragilities,
anxieties, neuroses and desires. What are secrets and why do we create
them, guard them, generate more? We are taught not to lie, to be
apparently transparent and up front and yet none of us really are or even
can be.
Mayerling
Framed woodcut print | 29” H x 32 7/8” W | 1966
The Spell
Unframed oil on canvas | 48” W x 50.5” H | 1985
1 Maria Morris Hambourg is Curator at the Department of Photographs,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art New York. This text is from the exhibition catalog: The Waking
Dream: Photography’s First Century. Selections from the Gilman Paper Company Collection by
Maria Morris Hambourg, Pierre Apraxine, Malcolm Daniel, Jeff L. Rosenheim, and Virginia Heckert
(1993) The title comes from Keats: Ode to a Nightingale (also the carter family song: Winding
Stream).
2 Smee, Sebastian. “The Man Who Wouldn’t Stop Painting.” Boston Globe, April 26, 2009.
Accessed July 2016. http://archive.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2009/04/26/the_man_who_
wouldnt_stop_painting/.
1 Taylor, Robert. “The Haunting of Steven Trefonides.” Boston Globe,
March 25, 1980.
2 Smee, Sebastian. “The Man Who Wouldn’t Stop Painting.” Boston
Globe, April 26, 2009. Accessed July 2016. http://archive.boston.com/ae/
theater_arts/articles/2009/04/26/the_man_who_wouldnt_stop_painting/.

For the series of works involving women in trees we see them iterated in a vast
range of moods, implications and materials: pencil, ink, oil paint, print. “Nude in
Hammock” from 1966 reverberates through 1973’s The Nest, 1993’s In the Forest
and 2001’s Two Women in The Trees.
“Often described as a romantic painter, he nevertheless has a streak of mischief,
and is always seeing the comedy in romance. He describes the figures in one
painting as having "desires percolating around them." Another drawing, from the
1960s, shows four naked women in a vigorously drawn Maine landscape,
Trefonides's saucy answer to the conventional New England genre of windswept
coastal landscapes. "Four women on the rocks," he says wryly, after moving it into
view: "It's like a drink."” 1
Two Women in The Trees
Oil on canvas | 20” H x 22 3/4” W | 2001
Two Women on Swing
need info | |
1 Smee, Sebastian. “The Man Who Wouldn’t Stop Painting.” Boston Globe, April
26, 2009. Accessed July 2016. http://archive.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2009/04/26/the_man_who_wouldnt_stop_painting/.

His process is introverted-as a studio artist works alone and needs to enjoy that
solitude-but he has always been generous artist as well. Steven Trefonides was one
of my first examples of a professional artist, and as a child it seemed
perfectly normal that he should have his large Newberry street studio, that black
and white photography of a spare and candid nature would also go hand in hand
with energetic and colorful paintings, drawings and prints, that, of course, one
traded artworks for exotic items like canopy beds and went to India to take
photographs, and that one’s practice above all meant working very, very hard.
Notebooks, sketchbooks, and reams of paper got filled with drawings, and when
that wasn’t happening, and pictures weren’t being taken with cameras, then there
were other’s images to be looked at. Art books with pages marked everywhere,
stereopticon slides and relics from the photographic past to be perused,
consumed, enjoyed. Visual messages were everywhere.
One theme may have began years ago, a thread left dangling might be picked up
again years later, re-worked into a new set of meanings. This is the privilege of
time and of mastery-repetition yields richness and understanding that cannot be
reproduced without this process of hard labor. It’s earned. “For many people, there
is nothing quite so moving or inspiring as the sight of youthful talent blazing
away with total commitment,” writes Smee, “But in fact, there is something more
moving and, in its way, more impressive. It's the sight of creative talent at the
other end of life. The painter or performer who has dedicated a whole life to his
or her calling; the artist who has stamina, who has gone on creating, who, despite
setbacks, has never given up, and keeps on finding more to discover, more to
express. Steven Trefonides isn't done yet.” 1
Nor should he be: At age 90, Trefonides is still in his studio, still drawing, still
avidly reading, consuming the images in books, still looking, still making, because
art is life. He and Phyllis still make the drive 50 years later, breaking up the trip,
going more slowly, this time with dogs in tow instead of children, the now adult
children popping through with their own offspring and spouses, to run in the yard
and poke around the rocky beaches, the farmers market, Quoddy Head.
The real secret that Trefonides shows us, performs by turning out the pockets of
his mindscapes for us again and again, is this: his realities are now informing the
landscapes and places that surround us. Maine’s woods and horizons echo a
Trefonides-or start to look very much like a Bohlen, a Caponigro, a Bloom.
Martha Willette Lewis,
Resident Curator, The Institute Library, New Haven CT.
June, 2016
The Rainbow
Framed pastel on paper| 33 1/4” W x 29 1/2” H | 1985
As a young artist, he offered me studio visits, advice, support and help over the
years, and his model of work ethic and intellectual curiosity have stuck with me.
He always has been wonderful at treating other artists-including art students
and those just starting out-with respect and interest. One of the most impressive
aspects of a visit to Trefonides’s studio is the commitment to drawing-he has
chests full of works on paper, years of notebooks, years of inky scrawled lines,
of gestures and movement. His drawing hand is relaxed and assured with some
areas being intensely detailed and others left as open-ended lines dissipating into
the light of the page.
1 Smee, Sebastian. “The Man Who Wouldn’t Stop Painting.” Boston Globe, April
26, 2009. Accessed July 2016. http://archive.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2009/04/26/the_man_who_wouldnt_stop_painting/.

Steven Trefonides: Timeline
Sunrise
Pastel on paper | 24 W x 18 H | 1999
1926 Born New Bedford
Attended The Swain School of Design, New Bedford
1944-1945 Air Force WW2
Attended Vesper George School of Art 1924-1983
1950-1954 G.I. Bill painting major at the Boston Museum School, met
Hyman Bloom there
1951 William Maynard, Steven Trefonides – July 15, Watercolors
The Decordova Museum of Art, MA.
1954 Louis comfort Tiffany Grant to travel: Italy, France, Spain, Greece
1954- 1955 Photography Show – 5 Photographers -Steven Trefonides, John Brook,
Henry B. Kane, Donald Robinson, Phokian Karas,
Decordova Museum, MA.
Retrospective exhibit at Fitchburg Museum
Taught at Vesper George for 3 years
1956 Photographs by Stephen Trefonides, Decordova Museum, MA.
1958 Summer grand prize for painting at Portland (Maine) art festival
1959 Fulbright to India
1968 Blanche Colman award-bought Lubec house with prize money
1968 Retrospective exhibit at Brockton Museum
1968 Exhibit at Fuller Art Museum (now the Fuller Craft museum)
1969 Produced book, India, a collection of photographs, Grossman-Viking press
1969-1975 Taught art at UMass Boston
1971 Retrospective exhibit at University of Storrs CT
1978 Book From Shtetl To Suburbia: The Family In Jewish Literary
Imagination written by Sol Gittleman, drawings by Steven Trefonides
1980 Artist of the Year St. Botolph Club, Boston, MA.
1984 Fellow, The Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France
1986 Prints and drawings exhibit at Boston Public Library
1988 Exhibit, Alfred J. Walker gallery, Newberry Street
1989 Book: Photographs: Beacon Hill, Boston 1989 By Steven Trefonides
2012 Retrospective Through the Looking Glass, St. Botolph Club, Boston, Ma.
2016 Retrospective Steven Trefonides: Secrets at The Tides Institute & Museum,
Eastport, Maine
Major collections for painting and photographic works include:
MFA Boston, MET NY, MoMa NY, Dartmouth College, Wadsworth Athenaeum, CT.,
The New Britain Museum, CT., The Decordova Museum, Brandeis University, MA.,
Chase Manhattan Bank, NY.

Steven Trefonides: Secrets
List of Works in the Exhibition
Title Medium Year Size
End of the World
Nude in Hammock
Lubec Wall
Beached
Scallop Man
Filleting Haddock
Quoddy Head
The Nest
The Spell
The Spell
The Spell
The Rainbow
Unframed ink on paper
Framed charcoal drawing
Matted unframed ink drawing
Unframed drawing charcoal on
paper
Unframed drawing black ink on
paper
Unframed drawing black ink on
paper
Unframed black ink on paper
Unframed Editioned
Lithograph (more available in
TMA flatfiles)
Gouache and ink on paper
Matted mono-print
Unframed oil on canvas
Framed pastel on paper
1962
1966
1970
1970
1973
1973
1973
1973
1984
1985
1985
1985
11 x 14
48 x 48
23 3/4 x 18 1/2
30 x 22
14 x 11
14 x 11
14 x 11
22 3/4 x 31
14 x 11
11 x 14
48 x 50.5
33 1/4 x 29 1/2
Bibliography
Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life. 1863.
Corbett, William. "Creiger-Dane Gallery Show." Artmedia Magazine.
"Hyman Bloom." Hyman Bloom. Accessed July 2016. http://www.hymanbloom.com/.
Keats, John. "Ode on a Grecian Urn." In The Poetical Works of John
Keats. 1884.
L’Arroseur Arrosé. Directed by Louis Lumière and Auguste Lumière.
Performed by Benoît Duval and François Clerc. France, June 10, 1895.
Film.
"Nina Bohlen - Artist." Nina Bohlen. Accessed July 2016. http://
ninabohlenart.com/.
Smee, Sebastian. "The Man Who Wouldn't Stop Painting." Boston
Globe, April 26, 2009. Accessed July 2016. http://archive.boston.com/ae/
theater_arts/articles/2009/04/26/the_man_who_wouldnt_stop_painting/.
Smee, Sebastian. "Smee Introduction to Through the Looking Glass."
Botolph Club Catalog, 2012.
Taylor, Robert. "The Haunting of Steven Trefonides." Boston Globe,
March 25, 1980.
Embrace
Love in the Bathroom
In The Forest
Framed oil on paper
Framed pastel on paper
Framed charcoal on Paper
1987
1988
1993
39 1/8 x 31 1/2
44 7/8 x 37 1/2
33 x 41
Wilde, Oscar. The Decay of Lying. 1891.
as published in his book Intentions
Hurricane in the Ukraine
Women in The Trees
Framed pencil drawing
Unframed watercolor and
1996
1996
13 3/4 x 12 3/16
14 x 17
colored pencil
Firefly Green
Framed pastel on paper
1996
32 x 26
Mayerling
Framed woodcut print
1998
29 x 32 7/8
Two Girls in Tree
Framed Charcoal drawing
2000
36 1/3 x 28 3/4
Two Women in the Trees
Dog In Chair
Oil on canvas
Unframed ink drawing
2001
20 x 22 3/4
Our Tree
Unframed drawing
Nina Bohlen monoprint
Unframed monoprint
Hyman bloom ink drawing
Framed ink drawing
Nina’s Steven Trefonides
Framed ink drawing
3 monoprints by Nina Bohlen
Framed monoprints

Acknowledgements
Thanks to: Nina Bohlen, Steve and Phyllis Trefonides,
and their extended family, in particular Tony Rinaldo
for the photography- Tides Institute & Museum of Art,
framers, donors, who else?
Designed by: Lanie Nowak
Printed by:

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