"Steven Mikel Exhibits at the
Grand Bohemian Hotel and Gallery"
by Tim W. Jackson

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Steven Mikel's transition to full-time artist has been gradual. In fact, he's not quite there yet. But that doesn't keep the artist from Celebration, Florida, away from an opportunity to exhibit his work at Asheville's Grand Bohemian Hotel.  Steven was at the Grand Bohemian May 7–8 to offer painting demonstrations and to launch his exhibit "Dark Roast Watercolors: Painting With Coffee," which runs through June 2 at the Grand Bohemian Gallery. 

Even during his years as a chef—and more recently in his career in computers and graphic design—painting has always played a role in Steven's life. As a child he was fascinated watching his grandmother paint Christmas cards with watercolors. So Steven began painting at around age six.

Photo by Tim W. Jackson

He’s always painted whenever he got a chance, but just a few years ago after encouragement came during a juried art show, he decided to delve deeper into the idea of being an artist as a career. A traditional watercolorist, Steven had been dabbling with his new technique of painting with coffee and decided to work as hard as he could toward his French roast artistry.

"Art is a practice," Steven says. "Obviously talent is important, too, but when you combine that practice with talent, then you can really go somewhere." Steven's practice has paid off and he is making a splash in the art world with his sepia-toned coffee paintings.

The technique came to him as an effort to avoid wasting coffee. Steven's father-in-law, Audra Rogers, came to live with Steven and his wife and daughter about five years ago. After a few weeks Steven concluded that something just wasn't right with the Monday morning coffee. Turns out Audra didn't want to waste the Sunday coffee that was never consumed, so he had simply been running it back through the coffee maker on Monday mornings.

Steven, a longtime coffee enthusiast, agreed the brew shouldn't be wasted. He’d noticed that when a drip of coffee would splash onto his paper while painting it would create an impressive stain. So he decided to try painting with coffee. It worked, and the Sunday coffee was saved!

In the past few years Steven has perfected his technique and has worked on using different coffee mixtures. Calling on his training as a chef, he began to make coffee reductions to get thicker, darker coffee mixtures. Often, he will simply paint out of the coffee cup from which he is drinking. He also has studied the Old Masters and the way they protected their organic paints and has come up with a surfacing process to allow for archival quality in his works. Now the goal is just to keep painting.

"The demand for my work has been pretty high, so it's important to keep painting as much as I can," says Steven. His works feature everyday items and scenes and says art connects you to things not necessarily seen. It reveals them. And thus Steven takes photos or makes sketches of the things he sees around him and then he puts coffee to paper.

"It's a stop-and-smell-the-roses kind of thing," he says. On the Saturday morning of his art demonstration at the Grand Bohemian, he was working on a floral scene he had sketched behind the police station in Asheville. The subjects in his works vary greatly but the unifying element is the sepia tones created by the coffee.

"It gives me a lot of freedom. I'm not locked into painting one particular subject over and over. I can paint whatever interests me. It keeps things fresh." Fresh, perhaps, like a newly brewed cup of coffee.

Photo by Tim W. Jackson

You can see Steven's work at the Grand Bohemian Gallery through June 2. The gallery is open Monday - Thursday 10 a.m. - 7 p.m., Friday -Saturday 10 a.m. - 8 p.m., and Sunday 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. The gallery is located at 11 Boston Way in Asheville. For more information call 828.398.5555.