Stephen Towns

About the Artist

Stephen Towns was born in 1980 in Lincolnville, South Carolina, and received a Bachelor of Fine Art in painting from the University of South Carolina. His work has been exhibited nationally, including solo exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Galerie Myrtis, York College, Goucher College,  as well as group exhibitions at Jack Shainman Gallery: The School, August Wilson Cultural Center, Arlington Art Center, The David C. Driskell Center, Montpelier Arts Center, Star- Spangled Banner Flag House and Museum. His work has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, Artforum, the Washington Post, Hyperallergic, Cultured Magazine, AfroPunk, Hype Beast and the American Craft Council Magazine. Towns was honored as the inaugural recipient of the 2016 Municipal Art Society of Baltimore Travel Prize and received a Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance Rubys Artist Grant in 2015. In 2018, Towns was a semi-finalist for the Sondheim Artscape Prize and awarded a MD State Arts Council’s Individual Artist Award. Towns’s work is in the private collections of The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), Art + Practice, artist Mark Bradford’s nonprofit based in Leimert Park, Los Angeles, The Petrucci Family Foundation, The Baltimore Museum of Art, the City of Charleston, South Carolina, The Nelson Atkins Museum, St. Louis, Missouri, and is held in private collections nationally and abroad. In 2022, Towns will exhibit Declaration and Resistance, a solo exhibition of paintings and quilts at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Pennsylvania. Towns currently lives and works in Baltimore, MD.