About Me

Hi, I'm Steve Puttrich.

A beautiful view does not make a strong painting. You stand in front of a scene that stopped you cold, and twenty minutes in the design is crowded, the values have scattered, and whatever made you stop has disappeared under too much information.

That problem is why I built The Fairview Finder™.

I've painted in watercolor and oil for forty-five years and taught for ten. Landscapes, mostly outdoors. Workshops, mentoring, and a lot of hours helping painters see the difference between a scene and a painting.

In 1981 I was hired as an architectural illustrator and model maker at DeLeuw, Cather & Company, later Parsons Corporation. I drew buildings and built models for engineers, where a drawing had to solve a problem or it was worthless. I stayed thirty-five years.

In 2003 my boss retired and I took his place. That same summer our president ran an in-house Innovation Cook-Off. Submit one idea that would grow the company, raise revenue, or cut spending. I submitted seven. Three moved forward, one won an award, and the whole pile helped put me over the top. I came out of it running our Creative Services Group and leading the innovation team for our global business unit.

None of it felt new. I had been doing that since I was a kid, before anyone called it innovation. I loved connections: finding what works in one area and seeing whether it solves a pain point in another. That is the whole method. Be aware. Ask questions.

What I was no longer doing was painting. My wife Bobbie, a painter herself, noticed before I did. Her solution was to turn our vacations into painting retreats so I wouldn’t lose the skill. It worked, and we never stopped. We are still signing up for classes and workshops, still learning.

Parsons and I parted ways in 2016. That same year the Palette and Chisel needed a watercolor instructor. I said yes, and that was the start of my teaching life.

The Fairview Finder came out of all of it. Painters had a pain point, and nobody had built a good tool for it. A good tool makes the next right step easier, and that is all I was after.

I wanted something a painter could hold up in the field and use in ten seconds. No batteries, no app, nothing to learn. A clear way to frame the world, simplify what you're looking at, sort the values, and make your design decisions while the painting is still all possibility. 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, find a focal point they had walked right past, and finally understand what it means to see like a painter. That's the part I love.

Composition isn't the only thing painters wrestle with. There's also the day the work won't come, the room feels loud, and quitting starts to sound reasonable. That's why I wrote the Studio Reset™ books.

Steady Hand, Quiet Mind is about returning to calm and clear thinking in the middle of the work.

When the Studio Goes Sideways is a field guide for the days the painting isn't working.

All of it comes out of the same belief I carry into painting and teaching: design gives a painting structure, story gives it meaning, freshness keeps it alive.

I hope these help you see more clearly and paint with more confidence. Thanks for being here.

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