Steve Behar

Steve Behar is a narrative painter based in San Diego, California. His work has been included in exhibitions at the San Diego Museum of Art, the Butler Institute of American Art, and the Ankrum Gallery in Los Angeles. Trained as a psychologist specializing in testing, Behar draws influence from the Thematic Apperception Test, which presents people in intentionally ambiguous interpersonal interactions. In the 1930s, test makers selected magazine illustrations by artists including Leon Kroll and Harry Morse Meyers for this purpose, leaving interpretation of the depicted narrative to the viewer. Behar's work is also shaped by midcentury media, particularly advertising, television, and film. The media of that era offered Americans a vision of life that rarely matched reality, and his paintings attempt to capture that gap. He creates digital collages from borrowed media imagery, which he then paints.