Upon graduating from UCLA, Hurd began to work from the idea that location can be the subject for an artwork and created site-specific works that utilized visual elements, often with paint, to discuss aspects surrounding a specific place. This contextual approach to the subject led to his shift towards paintings derived from found source materials, transforming cultural detritus into socially and politically charged works.[4][5]
Hurd's paintings employ a loosely naturalistic, drippy oil paint or adopt a blocky, painterly pixelation reminiscent of early computer graphics to reinterpret found source materials such as advertising flyers, magazine covers, artreviews, productlogos, news photos, and his own agitated scribblings. This approach to painting plays a key role in Hurd's investigation into the nature of images and representation, offering a critique of contemporary society and serving as a methodical exploration of painting itself, reminding viewers that they are looking at a painted object.[6][7]
Women's Day & Family Circlemagazine covers, a series of drippy paintings from 1996 to 2022, were fertile ground for Hurd's critical commentary on mass media and domestic life. These covers, with their overt commercialization of everyday life and cultural anxieties, employed bold text to further manipulate readers into buying back their own hopes, fears and dreams.[8] Examples include phrases like "Could your pet be making you sick?", "How your dreams can solve your problems", and "How real women find the time to exercise!" all while prominently featuring images of extravagant cakes and cookies alongside splashy written phrases such as "Desserts your family will love!"[9] By reinterpreting them with his messy paint style and presenting them as paintings, Hurd invites a second look at what these magazines are promoting.[10]
Frequently, Hurd adopts a critical and sarcastic stance towards figures of authority. In 1996, after receiving a negative review of his exhibition in the LA Times, he created a wall-sized painting entitled Safe Passage, depicting the entire newspaper section featuring everything on the page, including his review. Utilizing his drippy paint technique, he blurred and dissolved the text, then incorporated trompe l'oeil renderings of malt liquor bottles along the periphery of the newspaper's layout.[11] The Times critic had stated Hurd’s paintings “are as empty as its throwaway subject matter,”[12] giving Hurd the idea to paint what he considered an empty review.[13] As literary and media theorist Laurence A. Rickels put it, "Hurd remakes the LA Times journalist’s judgment upon the show before-that his work is empty just like its throwaway subject matter-into a performative self-sentence, thereby raising the newspaper phrase as it destroys itself towards the power of writing”.[14] In these works Hurd turns the tables on those in charge by using the power of paint, displaying artistic independence, and exposing the weaknesses of their arguments, all while refusing to submit to authority. In a separate piece titled, Should Never Be Exhibited 2006, serving as an introduction to Hurd’s exhibition at Rosamund Felsen Gallery, he transcribed a supervisor's letter of reprimand in paint, concerning his communication skills—deemed offensive and disrespectful—into what curator/critic Christopher Bedford called a "dripping, sardonic script."[15]
While some of Hurd's paintings may initially seem familiar or humorous, such as Snuggled Snuggle—a 30-by-12-foot, multi-paneled, free-standing cutout of a well-known fabric softener's logo that incorporates its name, which he arranged to snuggle itself, his work can challenge how images are perceived by encouraging viewers to re-examine previously "understood" imagery.[16] Hurd's painterly alterations introduce additional visual layers of meaning, thereby increasing the impact of disturbing or sensitive images, as seen in his R.I.P. series of 2008, which features chunky pixelated paintings based on photographs of flag-draped coffins returning to the United States from the Iraq War. By hand-painting the mechanical reproduction of the digitized image, Hurd imbues the picture with a human quality, serving as a metaphor for how individual soldiers retain their inherent humanity despite being part of an automated system.[17] The R.I.P. series is not only meant to honor the Fallen Soldiers, but point out the mistakes of war, as Hurd puts it, “You’re seeing the flag on the coffin. It’s about the country going down, besides the individual. The flag is on the coffin, and the coffin’s going in the ground. And that’s America. They’re not just burying the soldiers. The pallbearers are burying America.” [3]
In a 1993 commentary on the Art Market, Hurd founded his own art gallery in a dumpster within a Santa Monicaartmall'sparking lot, which the established galleries used as their waste bin. Cleaning out anything other than dry trash, he branded the dumpster space Steve Hurd Fine Art, and filled it with artworks of artists he admired, such as Jason Rhoades, Paul McCarthy, Martin Kersels, Toba Khedoori, Manuel O’Campo, and Skip Arnold, and others. Steve Hurd Fine Art was part of a one-night art event called Mondo-Lot, organized by Dianna Cohen. Visitors to Steve Hurd Fine Art received flashlights and an exhibitionchecklist tasked with sifting through the trash of the other art venues to discover the desired works of the artists represented by Hurd’s Gallery. This temporary foray into art sales, conducted in the refuse space of the art marketplace, invites reflection on art's transient nature and the intertwined relationships between artist, gallerist, and collector.[20][22]
↑ Knight, Christopher (July 21, 2006). "Witty, odd and hopeful". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved October 10, 2025.
↑ Duncan, Michael (October 2012). "COLA- Award, Steve Hurd, catalog". The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs. Retrieved October 11, 2025.
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