Simon Carter
My work is based on the stretch of Essex coast where I live and have my studio. This coast is where the gardened landscape of East Anglia starts to fall, literally, into the spare and elemental spaces of the North Sea; where any idea of landscape as static and timeless is replaced by a sense of dynamic flux.
I use the elements of the coast, the creeks and estuaries, saltings and seawalls, as an archive of shapes and colours, of weather and of objects, trying to find a dynamism and passion in the paint that will match those in the landscape whilst retaining a structural clarity that allows observed fact to become something pictured and true.
Simon Carter was born in Essex in 1961. He studied at Colchester Institute (1980–81) and then North East London Polytechnic (1981–84).
Recent exhibitions include Made in Britain at the National Gallery of Poland, Gdansk and Contemporary British Painting at Yantai Art Museum, China both in March 2019. The RWS Contemporary Watercolour Exhibition, London, 2019. Solo Exhibitions at Messum’s, London and Messum’s, Wiltshire in 2018 and The Minories, Colchester in 2017. In 2016 a solo exhibition at SEA Foundation, Tilburg, Netherlands.
Carter has work in collections including Ipswich Borough Council, Rugby Museum and Art Gallery, Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, Yale Centre for British Art, USA, Tianjin Academy of Fine Art, China, Yantai Art Museum, China and the University of Essex.
In 2013 he collaborated with artist Robert Priseman to co-found the artist led group Contemporary British Painting. Simon Carter is represented by Messum’s and is currently President of Colchester Art Society.