Fantasy never took on a more literal state than in the dreamscapes of John Stephens. Religious themes – both man-made and natural – are solidified in impressions of stained glass and gushing waterfalls, to the depiction of entire mountain ranges residing within cathedrals, the subject matter has an underpinning of philosophical symbolism.

Stephens is a scholar as well as an artist, who was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania in 1945, He graduated from Dartmouth College with a BA in 1970 and studied under George Rickey, Richard Anuskiewicz, Walter Murch, and Varujan Boghosian. When he chose an artist’s career due to his health conditions, he felt compelled to measure his painting ability against those of the great masters, particularly the visual richness of the fifteenth-century Flemish painters. Combining his technical ability with a brilliant ease of color value, the artist’s finished works are worthy of comparison with the mystical realism of the Viennese fantastic realists.