Stephen Harwood

'There are few painters who have so well divined the true life of the city and, by an act of astonishing intuition, have been able to unite the past and present, mythology and reality, in artistic communion.

'Stephen Harwood's work is filled with the energy and momentum of the city itself... he is one of London's finest interpreters.'
Peter Ackroyd

Falling somewhere between reality and fiction, my work explores places that are in some way agitated or persuasive, or that possess qualities that may not be immediately identifiable or explicable; landscapes loaded with histories and associations (some barely perceptible or ‘only in the eye of the beholder’, some immersive and inescapable).

I engage with such locations through a process of reimagining. In this way, my paintings, drawings and films become an interpretative mirror or filter: an investigation of place that aims for a shared (historical) vantage point. There is a figurative element, too, when the location demands it. Adolescent males are invoked, and situated centre-stage; becoming the spirit of place, or genius loci, in the midst of their own developmental becoming.

The resulting images are perhaps latent landscapes; the reverse or underside of the superfici...

MA Fine Art Central St. Martins

Recent exhibitions include Dark Times (solo show), Three Colt Gallery, London, Picture Palace, Transition Gallery, London, Stay Home/Mail Art! at Kunstmuseen Krefeld, Germany, Mycorrhiza and Extancy curated by Sluice at AMP Gallery, London, This Year's Model 2020 and Store/Room at Studio1.1 Gallery, London and A Moveable Feast at Platforms Project Art Fair, Athens. Stephen has also shown his films in Open Projections 3 at Coventry Cathedral, Angus-Hughes Gallery, London, Platform Projects, Athens, Wotever Film Festival at the London Cinema Museum and at a series of artists’ film nights at Hackney Picturehouse which he also co-curated.