Steve Peters, Ph.D.

My childhood was spent playing in the Piney Woods of Northeast Texas. Even as a child, I turned to drawing and painting as a means of self-expression. My interest in painting led me to study theatre and design in college. I earned a Master’s degree in Theatre Arts from Baylor University and, after serving as a college-level Technical Director/Designer/Stage Director, I returned to college and earned a Ph.D. in Arts Administration from Texas Tech University. My professional career as a university theatre director and professor at Baylor led to leadership experiences in civic and university arts administration. I served on the boards of the International Council of Fine Arts Deans, the Wichita Arts Council, the Council of Arts and Sciences, and was president of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education, an organization for which I served two terms. I held associate dean and full deanships at Wayne State University and Friends University, respectively. Upon retiring in June 2024 after 10 years as dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Montevallo, my wife, Sandra and I relocated to her hometown of California, Missouri. We have two wonderful sons. 

Landscape paintings capture a fleeting sense of light, place and mystery for me. The landscape beckons us to remember it, even as the light slips behind a cloud, the tree blurs into a smear, and the river bends into ambiguity. How might I hold the scene together in its dance of light, its appearances and disappearances? The only certainty the landscape offers is its poetry of impermanence. Light falls into memory, colors blur, and every detail disintegrates in the flowing of time. What is left is impermanence, appearance and disappearance, calling us to hang on to the magic of the moment, and to each other. We, too, are the landscape.