Stephen’s Works

It has always been difficult for me to know what to say about one’s work, and I think that is the point. The harder it becomes in knowing what to write or say might indicate that something worthwhile is potentially emerging; something that may need air and a resistance to foreclosure. To quote Guston, ‘the only things you can really talk about in painting are impossible to talk about’. The intention has always been for the work to never only be itself. To reflect upon the complexity of the world, and equally, for the work to remain open and plural, so it feels in a state of becoming that may engage different things to different people. Representations in one form or another come and go in an attempt to self-negotiate the characteristics of memory and experience in our time, each authors the other. What is perceived in the flow and debris is possibly ourselves in this moment. This omnipresence, coupled with a sense of kinesthetic sediment, is continuously emergent, perhaps manifesting itself as a painting within a painting.

The paintings on this website are a sample of work made from 2020 to 2023 whilst I was renovating the farmhouse and building the studios. They are presented seasonally relevant to when they commenced, evolved or began to settle. A new website (stephenswindells.com) features work made since 2023 to the present. There is a little overlap between the websites regarding works made between 2023/24.