Sterling Strauser was born in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania and became a painter in expressionist/impressionist styles who used a heavy impasto technique. He began painting in 1926 in a near impressionist style that later evolved into an assertive Klee-like modernism. Still later his style softened into what one collector, Jim Sittig, of his work termed "romantic American expressionism." He was also an illustrator for "Mademoiselle" magazine and "Unicorn-A Magazine of Poetry".

Fellow artist, Russian David Burliuk, a member of the Blaue Reiter group in Munich, said of Strauser: "It is amazing to find a self-taught artist in a quaint little provincial village painting like the masters in the great art centers of the worl...