Simon Andrew ~ Painter

Simon Andrew

BIOGRAPHY

Simon Andrew was born in Portsmouth, spent his formative years in Penwith, Cornwall, studied science at Queen's University, Canada and fine art at Newcastle University where he received his MFA. While Simon was at Newcastle he was the beneficiary of The Lawrence Atwell Scholarship Award from Skinners’ Hall, London. U.K.

Simon was awarded first prize (Northern Region) for his work in The Laing National Landscape Competition. London. His work was also selected for The Hunting Group Contemporary Art Competition.

He has received arts council grants and is represented in major corporate collections, including Glaxo Wellcome, Hewlett Packard, Canadian Business Development Bank, Fidelity Investments and Her Majesty the Queen in Right. Simon has produced art for the artistic ventures of Mel Gibson and the Canadian multi - Juno Award winning group The Tragically Hip.

He has attended residencies in both Canada and abroad and was the recipient of a full fellowship award from The Vermont Studio Center, USA. Recently Simon won first prize for his work in Exposures, an exhibition which was judged by curators from contemporary public art galleries in Canada. He has had numerous solo shows at galleries both public and commercial at home and abroad. Currently Simon works in Canada and England.

STATEMENT

When painting, I concern myself with colour relationships, compositional structures and the physicality of the paint. I consider ‘subject’ the framework on which I hang the paint. My work is as much about the medium as the message. Colour is applied in an almost casual manner, other times slabbed on or carefully blended creating a diverse range of marks. Paint is treated as a physical material in its own right. It is a substance of meaning, not merely a vehicle to a desired end.

I try to make my paintings work not just on the macro level but also on the micro. I would like them to contain testing and varied passages of colour in addition to unanticipated compositions. I hope my work does not reveal all it has to say straight away but works on the observer at different levels over time, so that at one moment they might be aware of a colour relationships, the next a compositional quirk, the mood of the work and so on. Ideally it should grow with the observer in an unpredictable way. My paintings are a distilling process. They are often primed with an emotional charge, triggered by an event or a place. The intention is that they should conclude as authentic reconstructed experience.

Simon Andrew, Fields and Woods 2018 Oil on panel 16" x 20"

 Simon Andrew, Valley and Mountains with Snow 2018 Oil on panel 16” x 20”