About
Steve Puttrich

Artist, instructor,
inventor, and
creator of The Fairview Finder™

Hi, I’m Steve.

I’ve painted in watercolor and oil for more than forty-five years and taught for the past ten. Most of my subjects are landscapes, and much of my work happens outdoors.

Through all those years of painting, one question has continued to interest me:

How do we learn to see what matters?

The Difference Between a Scene and a Painting

A beautiful view doesn’t automatically make a strong painting.

You can stand before a scene that stops you cold, only to find that twenty minutes into the painting, the design has become crowded, the values have scattered, and whatever first caught your attention has disappeared beneath too much information.

Nature gives us everything at once. A painting requires us to choose.

What matters most? Where should the eye go first? Which shapes support the story? What can be simplified or left out?

Helping painters make those decisions is at the heart of my work.

An Artist Who Learned to Solve Problems

In 1981, I was hired as an architectural illustrator and model maker at DeLeuw, Cather & Company, which later became part of Parsons Corporation.

I drew buildings and built models for engineers. In that world, a drawing had to do more than look good. It had to explain an idea, solve a problem, and help someone take the next step. If it didn’t do that, it had little value.

I stayed for thirty-five years.

In 2003, our company president held an internal Innovation Cook-Off. Employees were invited to submit one idea that could grow the company, increase revenue, or reduce spending.

I submitted seven.

Three moved forward. One received an award. That experience helped lead me into running our Creative Services Group and serving on the innovation team for our global business unit.

None of it felt entirely new. I had been doing the same thing since childhood, long before I knew to call it innovation.

Pay attention to where pain is coming from.

Be curious. Ask questions.

Look for connections. Find something that works in one area and see whether it can solve a problem somewhere else.

Bobbie Kept Me Painting

While my professional life was growing, something important had quietly slipped away. I wasn’t painting.

My wife, Bobbie, who is also an artist, noticed before I did. Her solution was simple. She began turning our vacations into painting retreats so I wouldn’t lose the skill.

It worked.

We never stopped painting together. We’re still taking classes, attending workshops, traveling, learning, and discovering how much more there is to see.

My time at Parsons ended in 2016. That same year, the Palette & Chisel needed a watercolor instructor.

I said yes.

That was the beginning of my teaching life and a new chapter in my own work as an artist.

Where the Fairview Finder Began

The Fairview Finder grew out of all those parts of my life.

The painter understood the problem.

The teacher saw other artists struggling with it.

The designer and inventor wanted to build something useful.

Painters needed a quick way to separate a strong composition from all the visual noise surrounding it. Plenty of books explained composition, but there wasn’t a simple tool a painter could hold up and use in the moment.

So I began making one.

The first Fairview Finders were cut by hand from packing material in my garage. I carried the prototypes into the field, used them during workshops, and kept adjusting the design based on what painters actually needed.

I wasn’t interested in creating another complicated system.

I wanted something a painter could hold up and use within seconds. No batteries. No app. No technology standing between the artist and the scene.

Just a clear way to frame the world, test different crops, compare painting proportions, simplify values, and make design decisions while the painting is still full of possibility.

A good tool makes the next right step easier.

That is all I was after.

A Tool That Trains the Eye

The Fairview Finder doesn’t make the painting for you, and it isn’t meant to replace instinct.

It trains the eye you already have.

I’ve watched painters use it to simplify a tangled forest, rescue a composition that was going nowhere, discover a focal point they had walked right past, and finally understand what teachers mean when they say, “See like a painter.”

That is the part I love.

The tool helps someone see more clearly. Clearer seeing leads to better decisions. Better decisions leave more room for confident, fresh painting.

Explore The Fairview Finder 3.0

More Than Composition

Composition isn’t the only thing painters wrestle with.

There are also the days when the work won’t come, the studio feels loud, confidence disappears, and quitting begins to sound reasonable.

That struggle led me to write the Studio Reset™ books.

Steady Hand, Quiet Mind is about returning to calm, clarity, and trust in the middle of the creative process.

When the Studio Goes Sideways is a field guide for the frustrating days when the painting isn’t working and you need a useful next step.

The Fairview Finder helps you frame the painting.

The Studio Reset books help you stay with it.

Explore the Books, Bundles and Artist Resources

Design. Story. Freshness.

Everything I create and teach grows from three beliefs.

Design gives the painting structure.

Story gives it meaning.

Freshness keeps it alive.

Design helps us decide what belongs.

Story reminds us why we stopped to paint.

Freshness preserves the life we saw before we began explaining it to death.

These ideas guide my painting, my teaching, The Fairview Finder, and the resources I create for other artists.

Still Learning

After more than forty-five years, I’m still a student.

Bobbie and I continue to paint, travel, take workshops, teach, experiment, and learn from other artists. I don’t believe an artist ever arrives at the end of seeing.

There is always another question to ask.

There is always something familiar waiting to be seen differently.

My hope is that The Fairview Finder and the Studio Reset books help you see more clearly, make stronger decisions, and paint with greater confidence.

Thank you for being here.

Steve Puttrich
Artist, Instructor, and Creator of The Fairview Finder™