Roger Lee Steele (12 June 1945 – 4 August 2012). Raised in Wichita Falls, Texas, Steele was an American-born graphic artist/printmaker living in South Carolina best known for his lithography, an artistic process also known as relief printing. He was a printmaker specializing in the color-blend or split fountain technique often incorporating traditional chine-collé gold leaf techniques in his work. His abstract color graphics are frequently suggestive of an artistic link between mid-late Japanese motifs and the modern world.
Biography
As an exchange student at Tokyo's Sophia University, Steele studied graphic art and painting and was strongly attracted to the culture and artistic aesthetic of the late Edo period and early Meiji period. His studies at Sophia made a lasting impression and continued to inform his work throughout his life. Steele completed his studies at Texas Christian University, graduating in 1974 with a Master's degree in Fine Arts.
Eventually, his style came to strongly feature late period Japanese elements and techniques, evoking the “floating world” of the 18th and 19th centuries. His highly recognizable, occasionally “militaristic” approach was developed over decades to its current status as a point of reference for the genre. His earliest works featured landscape vistas fused with broadly martial representations, alternatively peaceful, then vaguely soldierly and even bellicose in composition.
Throughout his career, Steele played an active role in art education both as an educator and as a lecturer and curator, maintaining affiliations with the University of South Carolina, the Southern Graphics Council, American Print Alliance, and the World Print Council. He was a significant contributor to the Southern Graphics Council International, with service to that organization spanning nearly forty years. He held nearly every position on the board and continued to be artistically active up to his death in 2012. His works are to be found in a number of permanent museum and corporate collections as well as in private hands. His life and art were celebrated from March–April 2013 in an exhibition of his whimsical Valentine Collection at THE Fine Art Gallery, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Steele's contributions to the educational community of his hometown of Beaufort, South Carolina were the subject of a posthumous tribute in the Hilton Head Island News, February 2–8, 2017.
Affiliations
Southern Graphics Council: Treasurer (1978-1980), SC Representative at Large (2002-2004), Vice President for Internal Affairs (2004-2006), Curator of the Traveling Exhibition (2006-2009) American Print Alliance World Print Council Southeastern College Art Conference South Carolina Arts Commission