Simon Carter

I have been working with Simon for nearly 20 years. Visiting his studio on the Essex coast is always a joy and a privilege to watch his work develop at such close quarter.

Each day he makes drawings about things happening in the landscape; often returning to the same places for months at a time, sometimes just walking and seeing what happens.

He uses these drawings in the studio to improvise and rehearse possible ways to turn observation into painting, looking for things in the drawings that seem true, alive and unexpected. He wants the paintings to be direct and honest; to have the weight of an observed fact and the passion of something meant; but there is little point repeating things or making things that already exist so he aims for those moments of revelation and surprise when the thing on the studio wall assumes a life of its own.