About

Education:

1979 Rhode Island School of Design (MFA), Providence, Rhode Island, USA

1976 Wimbledon School of Art (BA), London, England

1975 St Martins School of Art, London, England

Exhibitions:

Selected Group/Solo

2019 The Westmorland Landscape Prize, Rheged Gallery, Penrith, Cumbria, UK

2016 Threadneedle Prize Exhibition, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy

2016 Affordable Art Fair, Artdog Gallery, Battersea, London, UK

2016 Threadneedle Prize, Mall Galleries, London, UK

2014 Affordable Art Fair, Artdog Gallery, Battersea, London, UK

2013 Threadneedle Prize, Mall Galleries, London, UK

2012 Weston Park Gallery, Weston Park, Shropshire, UK

2012 Lynn Painter-Stainer Prize, Mall Galleries, London, UK

2011 Friends Exhibition, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK

2010 Lynn Painter-Stainer Prize, Painters Hall, London, UK

2009 Lynn Painter-Stainer Prize, Painters Hall, London,UK

2009 Threadneedle Prize, Mall Galleries, London, UK

2008 Friends Exhibition, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK

2008 The Beach Voyeurs, Badcocks Gallery, Newlyn, Cornwall, England

2007 Affordable Art Fair, Badcocks Gallery, Battersea, London, UK

2007 Auction, Foundation for the care of Victims of Torture, London, UK

2007 Souls, Etcetera Gallery, London, UK

2007 Summer Exhibition, Badcocks Gallery, Newlyn, Cornwall, UK

2006 Friends Exhibition, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK

2005 Collins and Hastie Gallery, London, UK

2004 Landscapes and Figures, North House Gallery, Manningtree, UK

2003 The Green Space Gallery, London, UK

2000 The Wiseman Gallery, Oxford, UK

1999 The Wiseman Gallery, Oxford, UK

1997 Kendall Art and Design, Hudson, New York, USA

1997 Cable Street Gallery, London, UK

1990 The Show Room, Bonner Road, London, UK

1986 Tigray, Diarama Arts, London, UK

1984 Galeria Salon, Philadelphia, USA

1982 In Honour of the Brooklyn Bridge, David Findlay Jnr Gallery, New York, NY, USA

1982 Walker Art Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusets, USA

1981 Rhode Island Museum, Providence, Rhode Island, USA

Grants/Awards:

2006 First Prize, Friends Exhibition, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK
(Purchased by the Dulwich Picture Gallery)
1981 Fellowship, Fine Arts Workcentre Provincetown, Provincetown, Massachusets, USA

Collections:

The Schorr Collection

Collection of Denis Johnson,

and various private collections in UK and USA

After studying at St Martin’s and then Wimbledon School of Art Stephen Read moved to the US where he completed his MA at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). Following RISD Stephen was awarded a fellowship at the Fine Arts Workcentre in Provincetown, Massachusetts, an artists’ and writer’s colony. Here, he began working on his figurative paintings in a way which connected his work fundamentally to the processes of film-making and photography, linking his gestural painting style to the cut and paste techniques of editing.

Stephen distils his images, selecting his information from holiday snaps, film, TV and video stills, the internet and travel brochures, into moments taken from an apparently ongoing narrative, with all its implied history and future. His paintings are collages – gestures, events and vistas from other sources – pre-focused through many other lenses, blurred and flattened by the process of selection. This process, and the economy of Stephen’s painting technique, reduce detail to the bare essentials yet paradoxically produce a painting filled with immediately recognisable, familiar narratives from our collective experience.

However, our final squint through the painter’s own lens forces us to look through the window not onto real life, but onto another disconcerting and ambiguous reality. These paintings are framed to implicate us. The images of isolated events by the turbulent water’s edge trigger memories and connect us uneasily to the bigger picture, highlighting our voyeuristic role in its construction.

Pia Randall-Goddard