Stephen Truax (b. 1985, Glenview, IL) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. For the past ten years, Truax has made paintings on-site from direct observation, completing each in a single session using a custom portable setup. He captures friends and lovers in repose, focusing especially on his partner, Thomas. Looking to American plein-air painters such as Fairfield Porter and Lois Dodd, Truax approaches landscape and figure with equal directness and brevity. Working in series, he returns to familiar sites, approaching them each time with a fresh painterly perspective and tracking changes in light, atmosphere, and weather over time. Writing in Artforum, David Colman observed of Truax’s work, “A suite of postcard-like, Alpine-style paintings by Stephen Truax magnified the idea of longing through the revelation that sites in the landscapes depicted places for gay hookups.”

Truax presented his debut solo exhibition with Fernberger in June 2026. His work has been included in exhibitions at the FLAG Art Foundation, New York; the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs; and the Long Island Museum, Stony Brook. He has independently organized numerous exhibitions, including Toward the Light: Artists for the Ali Forney Center at David Zwirner, New York; Any distance between us (2021–2022) at the RISD Museum, Providence; and Intimacy (2018) at Yossi Milo Gallery, New York. His work has been discussed in The New York Times, Artforum, and other publications, and is held in the collections of 21c Museum Hotels, the Tang Teaching Museum, and the Art Museum of West Virginia University. Truax earned his BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2007.