Stephen D'Onofrio is a contemporary painter working in acrylic on canvas, creating flat, single-panel works rooted in the still-life tradition. Drawing on the visual language of 17th–19th century European still-life painting — its shallow pictorial space, stark tonal contrast, and careful composition — D'Onofrio translates that historical discipline into contemporary subject matter centered on fruit and flora.

His practice moves fluidly across scale and subject: from intimate fruit bowls and tabletop arrangements, to orchard scenes of cherry, lemon, lime, and stone fruit trees, to more recent explorations of flowers and urban flower stands. Across these bodies of work, fruit and plant life serve as a throughline — sometimes isolated and closely observed, sometimes multiplied into dense, patterned fields of color and form.

As his subject matter has expanded, so has his formal range. Some paintings retain the clarity and legibility of traditional still life, while others move toward abstraction, where color, surface, and texture take precedence over clearly defined subject matter. This tension between structure and openness runs throughout his work, giving him room to push individual series in new directions — including a body of painted concrete vessels that extend his still-life vocabulary into three-dimensional, functional objects.

Taken as a whole, D'Onofrio's practice holds onto the quiet formal language of centuries-old still-life painting while continually reopening it — using fruit, trees, and flowers as a means to explore color, texture, and composition anew.

Stephen D’Onofrio is a contemporary visual artist focused on painting. He received his BFA and MFA from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2013 and 2016, respectively. In 2018, D’Onofrio was a finalist for the prestigious Hopper Prize. He has exhibited extensively in venues across the country, including galleries in Dallas, Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Philadelphia. His work can be found in numerous private and public collections including Fidelity Investments, Estée Lauder, and the Clements Collection at UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas. D’Onofrio has lived and worked in Philadelphia since being awarded an artist residency in the city at Jasper Studios in 2017. His work is represented in the United States by Galleri Urbane, Dallas.