About
Steve Comba is a Southern California-based artist and museum professional. He received his BA from the College of Creative Studies at UC Santa Barbara and his MFA from Claremont Graduate University. His paintings and drawings have been shown in group and solo exhibitions throughout the southland. In addition to being a practicing studio artist, he has also worked in the museum field for the past 34 years. His experience in museums includes exhibitions, administrative, registrarial, and curatorial projects ranging from historical exhibitions of the works of Francisco Goya, Kathë Kollwitz and Rico Lebrun to numerous exhibitions examining the works of contemporary artists in the greater Los Angeles area. He was founding Vice President of the Claremont Museum of Art and curated five of that museum's inaugural exhibitions, including retrospective exhibitions Karl Benjamin and James Hueter. At Pomona College, he designed and opened the Native American Collection Study Center at Pomona College in 2011 and in 2015 was awarded the Peter W. Stanley Distinguished Staff Award from Pomona College. He is currently the Associate Director/Registrar at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College.
"My journey as a painter has ranged from abstracted minimalist explorations of the object as primary structure, with only those essential elements such as color and scale as the key communicator of meaning, to a decidedly Romantic impulse to tell "stories" through the traditions of representation. Though I'm still a strong advocate of the power and effectiveness of the abstract, theoretical and cerebral, I'm strongly drawn to the power of narration and representational imagery. All along this journey, my guiding influence has been Nature, or perhaps more accurately, natural form. I'm still interested in the essential elements that constitute the “made” object (color, shape, scale), yet I'm compelled towards reflecting the source: the light, shape, and timelessness of landscape and the innate, uniquely human desire to read meaning and narratives from pictures."