Previous Exhibition
Paul Stevenson
September, 2008
As a teenager fed on a visual diet in Museums and Galleries, I began to make sense of Modern Art. The War-Artists Shows in the National Gallery introduced me to Moore’s shelter drawings; Paul Nash’s poetic evocation of war in the air, Sutherland’s and Piper’s bombed buildings. This was paralleled by a love of making things; a career in engineering seemed to be indicated. Architecture held out the possibility of combining the two aspects.
The School of Architecture at the Northern Polytechnic fitted the need perfectly and best of all, the ‘Art Studio’ was run by an abstract painter of considerable repute, Cecil Stephenson. He introduced me to the work of other abstract artists, Jean Arp, Ben Nicholson, (Cecil’s neighbour), Calder, Maholy Nagy and other Bauhaus artists.
With Cecil’s guidance I produced my first colour relief in 1944. I have been making them ever since. I can only think that my love of architecture is responsible for the emphasis on structure and a need for underlying concepts in my paintings. Certainly I am free from the problems of building contractors; a relatively small relief is a form of ‘architecture’ that an artist can control.
Demobbed from the army in 1948, I left architecture and enrolled in a Fine Art course at St. Martins School of Art. A career as a lecturer in Fine Art during the period of new development in art education in the 60’s and 70’s broadened the range of influences.
Early work was often based on archaeological subjects; megalithic buildings with their distinctive post and lintel structure offered a chance to experiment with a variety of paint surfaces. Gradually, an underlying concern with the relationship with ancient cultures with 20th Century developed into a distinctly thematic approach. Subjects such as Boats, Aircraft and Protective Clothing, were seen as part of the theme of the ‘carapace’. This could encompass an ancient Greek bronze helmet or an astronaut’s space suit.
From 1959 to the resent time the balance between figurative and non-figurative aspects could alter; pure abstraction or representation was not a concern. A study of Picasso’s work in the Forties lead to a conviction that the synthetic Cubism of Picasso and Braque was the basis of Twentieth Century vision and capable of indefinite development and lies in the background of work from Mondrian to Rauschenberg.
Paul Stevenson, 2004.
