EMERGING ARTISTS:  Fredrick Stephens Fredrick Stephens doesn’t paint blue skies any more. “Everyone paints green trees and blue skies,” he says. Instead, his landscapes are studies in vivid color. On one wall in his studio at Blue Raven, autumn-hued trees and ripening fields glow beneath a low, stormy sky. In front of him on an already framed canvas, a silver stream flows past a forest turned deep purple as the sun drops below the horizon. The moon literally glistens on the canvas and with a few swift strokes from Fredrick’s brush a tree trunk emerges from the dusky foliage. He admits that he has been painting “forever.” “I’ve been painting since I was a little kid.” He stops to mix a touch of white into his palette, then leans in to give the tree trunk a few touches of highlight. “I’ve always loved doing it. I’ve always loved drawing … and any kind (of painting) I can get my hands on.” Fredrick studied art at College of Eastern Utah, but became disenchanted with the repetition. “They all paint the same thing,” he says. “We were taught to mimic and do the same thing.” Instead, he found and artist whose work he admired and studied with him. One thing college taught him, though, was to work with oils. “I love oils. They have a great ability to hold color,” he says. The inspiration for Fredrick’s landscapes is the land he knows best: his home area of Sanpete County, Utah. “I love the landscape, the changing landscape, especially in early morning and evening,” he says.