What can be said about such an artist? His fellow student Simon Cutts provides us a comprehensive insight into Stephen Skidmore´s pictorial inventions: since almost 40 years the artist has lived and worked in a tiny apartment in London. In the first years he painted with gouache and acrylic, then started to use oil. Small sized paintings. In the early days, his landlady told him he couldn´t have pictures on the wall, so he kept them under his bed. Now it is too late for that.
From his living-bedroom at Avenue Crescent in Acton, West London, - renamed due to tenancy law into ‚studio apartment’ – he painted looking through the rain on the window melancholic blurred street scenes, Rain Paintings. Now the same contemplating, blue view is captured by defoliated trees over the roof ridges, expecting the upcoming spring.
We will present the latest works Window Paintings from 2012/13, a series of 18 paintings, created within two years. A glance at the world outside the artist´s comfort zone, reduced to black and white.
As Baudelaire wrote: „To create a template, that is genius“.
On the occasion of this exhibition the artist book The Window Paintings with images of several paintings and a poem by John Bevois will be released as volume IV of the series Carpe Diem in an edition of 200 signed copies.
Stephen Skidmore, born 1950 in Newcastle-under-Lyme, England
Selected exhibitions:
2009 Rain Paintings, Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna
2007 Certain Trees - Coracle, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven
1997 Pittura, Castello di Rivoli, Turin
1995 Simple&Pure, Laure Genillard, London; No Wash Your Hands, Arnolfini, Bristol; Stephen Skidmore & Elka Denda, Johnen/Schöttle, Cologne
1992 Galerie Rüdiger Schöttle, Paris
1991 Johnen/Schöttle, Cologne
1984 Low Tech, Rees Martin, London
