Steve Courchaine: Seeing Portraits 'Was Emotional'

By Bob Castello
SJCS Communications Manager

Steve Courchaine has a vivid memory of the time when he was very young, maybe 3 years old, and he was on the floor with his grandmother, and he drew a stick figure, and she complimented him on it.

"I can remember that proud feeling I had back then," he said.

A few years later, when he was in the second grade, he recalled seeing a picture of Jesus a woman had drawn in pencil.

"I was just flabbergasted," he said. "I remember looking at the eyes, the nose. I remember thinking, 'How in the world did somebody do that?' It really spurred something inside of me.

"Have I been an artist all my life? I think you're born with that interest in creating something, and to me it's magical to create the illusion of a three-dimensional scene with just paint and a brush."

It sounds so simplistic, and yet, the results of paint and a brush can be extraordinary. They can be seen in the new Founders Saint Joseph's Way Center, hanging from the wall in Barbara McGrath Hall.

The portraits of the House saints -- Sister Josephine Bakhita, Sister Katherine Drexel, Saint Gianna Molla and Saint Oscar Romero -- are the work of Mr. Courchaine, who carefully painted them over a period of about six months and then donated them to the school.

(Click HERE for more on the House program and the House saints.)

"It touched me to do it," said Mr. Courchaine, who with his wife, Lynn, are the parents of a St. Joe's graduate, Hayden ('24), a sophomore at The Citadel; and a current student, Austin ('28).

"I've got the talent and a commitment to do it, and that's what it's all about for me. I just love to paint. I'll paint till the day I die. I'm just so grateful that was instilled in me at an early age."

A self-taught painter

However, he did not act on his urge to be artistic right away.

Mr. Courchaine had a business career in public accounting and banking. He started seriously sketching in his 20s, and then in his 30s he started oil painting each Sunday. It wasn't until his late 40s that he started painting full-time.

Mr. Courchaine is self-taught as a painter, although he studied with some prominent artists, including Morgan Weistling, one of America's top contemporary painters.

Mostly, though, Mr. Courchaine learned through practice, books, everything he could get his hands on, "doing it on my own, the hard way."

The family lived in Georgia when he started painting full-time in 1997. He built a studio on their property, and he was in a gallery in Atlanta.

They moved to Greenville in 2004, and he worked out of his home for a few years. He's had a studio in the Greenville Center for Creative Arts in the West End Village for the past eight years. Their forte is art classes, but they also provide studios for working artists, and he's one of at least 30.

"It's been a long haul," he said. "You know you're improving when your rejects are really good. When I first started out, my rejects were pretty bad."

As for the portraits of the saints, Mr. Courchaine began by selecting a size he thought would be impactful (he decided on 30 x 24 inches). He then did a "detail study" to determine how much of the form he was going to include on the canvas.

For each saint, he did a search on the internet for a variety of photos, a variety of poses, some color, some black and white.

"There was no photograph I could just copy verbatim because they were all old and didn't have the right poses," he said.

He had four blank canvases, and he sketched one of the saints on each in charcoal. Then he met with a committee from the school, and the committee signed off on them late in 2025.

Four 'old friends'

Mr. Courchaine began by painting Oscar Romero in January.

"It took me about a month and a half," he said. "What I'll do is I'll do the painting and I'll set it aside and let it sit for a while, and then I'll go back and fine tune it. Then I went on to the next one.

"It was a very long and arduous journey for me because I'm more of a landscape guy, but I love doing portraits."

In fact, Mr. Courchaine has become quite attached to the saints.

"We hung them, and then a month or so later we came back and it was emotional for me to see them," he said. "It was like visiting old friends because I really did get to know each one of them having painted them, and I read their stories, and then to come back and see them, it moved me. It was meaningful for me, believe me. It was special."

In a way, Mr. Courchaine is not far removed from the little boy on the floor with his grandmother.

The creative gene has bridged the gap from then until now.

"What you're born with is not necessarily talent, but an unrelenting drive to create something on canvas," he said. "It's the nature of who you are. You see it and it's magical to you so you want to pursue it. I've been so grateful for this desire to paint, and it still holds magic. To get feedback from others means the world to me.

"The whole thing is a communication skill. You're communicating something, and when people are moved by one of your paintings, there's no better gift on the planet. When somebody buys your painting, that validates it, but the joy I get is people appreciating it."

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You can usually find Mr. Courchaine in his studio at Greenville Center for Creative Arts most afternoons Tuesday through Friday. Stop by and see him. He enjoys visitors. He also participates in the Metropolitan Arts Council’s monthly First Friday Gallery Crawls from 5:30-8:00 PM and will be participating in the annual Open Studios Event November 14-16. Any SJCS family member who comes to the studio and purchases a painting will receive a 20% discount through December 31, 2025. Mr. Courchaine can be reached at courchaine.artstudio@gmail.com or  864.214.6156. View his work at stevecourchaineartstudio.com.