Steve Lopes

Steve Lopes is a contemporary artist known for his figurative landscape paintings.

Recently awarded the prestigious Kings School Art Prize, he also won the 2018 Gallipoli Art Prize, having travelled to the Western Front battlefields and exhibited works in the touring exhibition Salient – Contemporary artists at the Western Front at The Hyde Park ANZAC memorial in Sydney as well as “Your Friend the Enemy exhibitions”. His survey show Steve Lopes – Encountered, was held at Sydney’s SH Ervin Gallery and Orange Regional Gallery in 2022.

Raised in Sydney in a migrant family who for generations fished and worked the land on the volcanic Aeolian Islands off the coast of Sicily.

He studied at London Print Studio, the Art Students League of New York and the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. An inveterate traveller, Lopes’ insatiable curiosity for new experiences drives his art, through which he connects the threads of history and place with the people who have shaped them.  

Steve’s work is held in major public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Australia; Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra; BHP Billiton Art Collection; the Time Warner Collection in New York; and the David Bowie and Rolls Royce collections in London. He recently had a solo show in New York City at Thomas VanDyke Gallery. In 2025 The State Library of NSW purchased 20 of Lopes drawings for their permanent collection.

Art Gallery of NSW Curator of Australian Art, Anne Ryan says of Lopes’s work: “There is an intensely psychological undercurrent to these works where meaning is hinted at but never made explicit – the suggestion of a parable that goes beyond the moment to a meaning of more timeless significance. Both artist and viewer become observers, somewhat detached from a scenario that seems close yet also universal.”

Lopes is a dual national Australian/Italian living in Sydney, Australia
Steve Lopes is represented by Mitchell Fine Art, www.mitchellfineartgallery.com.

Portrait photograph of Steve Lopes, Athens, 2025 by Michael Bradfield.
Artwork photography courtesy Riste Andrievski.