S K Stevens

About

I was born in Liverpool in 1963, was educated at Liverpool Girls College and went on to study Fine Art and History at 'Liverpool Institute of Higher Education, St Katherine's College. I returned to education in 1998 attending Goldsmiths College, London from where I obtained a Post Graduate Diploma and Masters Degree in Art Psychotherapy.

I deliberately title my works in a way that allows the viewer freedom to make the picture their own, hoping to evoke an emotional response, a memory or a feeling. The paintings have an immediacy which makes them attractive at first glance but beyond which lies an emotional depth, rich in life, intensity and complexity. The paintings are often intimate and fragile, carefully considered yet spontaneously painted. I aim to tempt the onlooker to engage with the varying colour palettes, to encourage a closer inspection, to bring the small details to life, layering of paint and marks made purely by pallet knife. The seductive use of colour and texture creates a universal accessibility to the work and aims to allow everyone an experience that is personal and unique to them.

I aim to produce work that is distinctive and instinctive, that holds a rawness that is genuine, honest and never contrived. I approach each painting with a desire to capture a moment only, a fragment of time capturing an impression and emotional response that is gone almost before I have time to take it all in. There is nothing hidden in these paintings, nothing kept from the viewer about the work they see or the artist that painted them but there are many possible levels of interpretation and understanding about both