Having grown up in Philadelphia, Stephen (Steve) Early began his art education at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. After graduating in commercial art he worked for a while as an illustrator, completing additional studies at the Art Students League of New York alongside renowned painter Nelson Shanks, who was an important influence. Early worked as Shanks’ teaching assistant at the League before joining the faculty at Studio Incamminati in Philadelphia when it was founded in 2002. Since then he has served as a principal instructor in their intensive and advanced painting workshops. He has also taught figure painting workshops at institutions including the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the New York Academy of Art.

Early is known for his unapologetically erotic, classically grounded depictions of the naked body. Working firmly within the traditions of western painting while challenging many of its conventions, he has built a body of work that places queer desire at the centre of figurative art rather than at its margins. His paintings are characterised by a disciplined, almost academic handling of form. Musculature is carefully modelled, skin rendered with close attention to tone and texture, and compositions often echoing renaissance and baroque precedents. Yet his figures are not mythological stand-ins or allegories designed to neutralise desire; they are contemporary, self-possessed, and aware of being seen. The gaze in Early’s work is reciprocal and direct, contradicting the distancing strategies that have historically allowed erotic content to masquerade as moral instruction or classical homage.

In addition to his teaching work at Studio Incamminati, Stephen Early has also established a workshop practice across the USA, giving classes in figure painting and form painting at The Torpedo Factory Art League in Alexandria, Virginia, and the Queens Gallery in Charlotte, North Carolina among others. He was the recipient of a Certificate of Excellence at the Portrait Society of America’s 2008 and 2010 Portrait Competitions, and has exhibited his work at the Scottsdale Salon of Fine Art in Scottsdale, Arizona, The Gratz Gallery and Conservation Studio in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, the Forbes Magazine Gallery in New York City, and the Union League of Philadelphia.

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Harry Carmean – American academic figurative painter of refined naked subjects.
Ed Cervone – American postwar gay illustrator of muscular idealised men.
Anthony Christian – British painter of classically rendered naked figures.