Steve Mumford

Who is Steve Mumford?

Steve Mumford is a contemporary American painter. His practice has recently included the depiction of scenes from the ongoing American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Typically he works in large, realist oil paintings, as well as watercolor on paper. Mumford received his M.F.A in 1994 at The School of Visual Arts, New York. During graduate school he met Inka Essenhigh, who he would later marry, as well as artists Michelle Lopez and Michael Lazarus.

Mumford entered Iraq on April 9, 2003, the day the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled in Baghdad, and he has periodically returned to the region to document the daily lives of both Iraqi citizens and American soldiers. These works were published, along with journalistic text by Mumford, in a book released through Drawn and Quarterly.

In April 2007, a major exhibition of his war works was held at the Pritzker Military Library in Chicago. Mumford is represented by Postmasters Gallery in New York City.

In 2013, Mumford made paintings of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

His work is currently being exhibited “Steve Mumford’s War Journals” at The Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, Tennessee through June 8, 2014.