Steve Simpson – Seven Decades of Picture Making

Kew Studio invites you to a retrospective exhibition at the Studio in honour of Resident Artist Steve Simpson, who very sadly passed away in June 2024.

The exhibition will be open to view by appointment for the next month, but Kew Studio will also be holding a public open day on Saturday April 5th, from 11-5pm. Please come along on this day to share with Kew Studio members in remembering and celebrating Steve and his inspiring and beautiful work.

Steve began drawing cartoons as a teenager at school and later received commissions as a freelance artist. Specialising in communicating complex, challenging ideas and concepts with humour and simplicity, Steve’s cartoons, illustrations and graphic design were used by a wide range of organisations. Over the past three decades Steve expanded into more personal paintings, drawings and prints. His work used bold forms, colours and tone to explore the borderlands between representation and abstraction, drawing inspiration from landscape, travel, music, story and myth, as well as personal experience. Figures – human, animal and avian – found their way into his paintings and he explored abstract composition in a series of tightly hatched drawings made using a Uniball pen. Steve felt his work often seemed to have a life of its own, taking him where it wanted to go. In this sense, picture-making acted as a form of spiritual exploration, an attempt to give expression and form to life’s light, shadow and ultimate mystery and bring order to chaos.