I’VE KNOWN STEPHEN for almost 25 years and in that
time, he has always impressed me with his direct
and insightful manner of painting. His attitude is a
refreshing “what you see is what you get” approach
to some of life’s most significant issues. Whether they
be intractable and all-consuming or delightful and
euphoric. Stephen is a rare kind of artist; one who takes
his work more seriously than himself – if that makes
sense? He has always struck me as someone who needs
to paint. Someone with something worth sharing.
During a recent conversation about his most recent
paintings it became clear that his work has always been
primarily concerned with love – what it is to be loved
and the overwhelming sense of abandonment at its
loss. Stephen is simultaneously capable of celebrating
life whilst mindful of its profound fragility – and
transience. His work is deceptively ambitious.
The Weight of Knowing
In his paintings Stephen has achieved an extraordinary synthesis; a compelling and
precarious mixture of acceptance and apprehension. His paintings are always visually
stunning – literally. Pure, sumptuous colours that ‘cloak’ a kind of drawing that displays
elements of automatism, appropriation and studious reflection. The tensions in his
paintings are almost palpable – and sometimes even daunting
As so much contemporary painting drifts towards literalism and illustration, Stephen’s
work remains implacably visual. His combined love of the material and his grasp of the
poetic is fast becoming all too rare. In fact, his landscapes demand to be experienced as if
they were not merely poetic, but poetry. They’re anything but landscapes – they’re states
of mind.
Opposite:
Green Spaghetti Head
I thought I was familiar with Stephen’s work. But was I in for a shock; his ceramics are
a revelation? Once again, he has managed to combine a sense of wonder with more
than a whiff of apprehension. He has achieved this without resorting to the hackneyed conventions of expressionism or the ceramicists age old ally – process. Instead, he has the ability to make objects that simultaneously beguile and disturb. Objects that appear both
fascinating and absurd. His ceramics are simultaneously joyous and somehow wonderfully ‘wrong’. Both exquisitely judged and
knowingly misjudged.
Just about everything Stephen makes appears to resonate
with a rich mixture of love and anxiety – the joyful and the
tragic. There’s genuine pathos. Heads that are becoming
‘unbound’ – again a metaphor, only this time a three-
dimensional metaphor that illustrates a state of mind rather
than a state of affairs. The last thing they aspire to is
likeness. Evidence of some intangible but nonetheless
seemingly visible trauma – or rather its shadow. It’s as if
the bandages have been partially removed to reveal not
The Invisible Man – but an unknowable man.
Stephens work embraces many contradictions, but his
greatest achievement is his ability to invest the familiar with the profound. Enjoy.