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Stephen Prince
About the artist:

"I enjoy painting, when it goes well. The challenge is to find your way to somewhere new, to something you’ve not discovered before. It’s a personal journey. Alan Davie talks about being one’s own alchemist. For me a good painting is one that sustains contemplation.

The act of painting has led me to believe consistently that a pathway to integrity (and other discoveries) can sustain a personal journey if one follows the example of Picasso’s dictum; “A painting is the sum of its destructions”, or Pasmore’s, “If we take a sheet of paper and scribble on it vigorously we become involved in the process of bringing into being something concrete and visible which was not there before… we find ourselves directing its course… until finally an image appears which surprises us by its familiarity and touches us as if awakening forgotten memories…”

Always at the back of my mind is a notion of the West Penwith landscape, which I ‘discovered’ for myself back in the 1970s. I have sought, on and off, an equivalent in paint on canvas ever since. Attempting to configure something of the power, the dynamism, and the excitement of being on the cliffs at Pendeen, Botallack, or at Cape Cornwall, or overlooking the harbour in St Ives on a blustery winter or blue sky spring day. In the end it’s all a diary – a kind of journal of personal events. "

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"...this place finds me..."

Yet this place finds me
And forms itself again

(W.S. Graham The Nightfishing)

Stephen Prince hails from Harlow in Essex where he was born in 1952. His family were all East End Londoners with a mixture of Irish, French and Jewish blood. He has lived and exhibited his paintings in a variety of locations including London, Sheffield, Nottingham and Cheltenham. After being a regular visitor to West Cornwall for many years Stephen has recently settled in St Just-in-Penwith.

Stephen Prince as a young student at the Central School of Art in London discovered for himself the mysteries and marvels of West Penwith when he took absence without leave and camped in and around St Just for ten days in May 1975.

The drawings with which he returned to London impressed his tutors and inspired painter David Haughton to revisit the area with small groups of students in the following year. Such trips became a permanent feature of teaching at the Central for several years. Stephen continued to visit St Just longing to live and work in this area as a permanent resident.

In 2006 the dream came true and in 2007 the Great Atlantic Galleries were pleased to stage Stephen Prince’s first exhibition of work from his new St Just base. These were the first paintings by Stephen to be seen on show in West Cornwall since he exhibited at the Wills Lane Gallery in St Ives during the 1980s.

Stephen reports, “The excitement and inspiration I felt when exploring the landscape of West Penwith for the first time thirty years ago is still with me today. A move to Cornwall in the summer of 2006 to live permanently in St Just has enabled a fresh start and the opportunity of change and discovery within my work. I am now able to explore my response to the landscape of Penwith for the first time as no longer just a visitor but as a resident painter.”

Dr Frances Spalding ( Reader in 20th Century British Art and Head of Fine Art at the University of Newcastle ) described Stephen's work as "challenging, vigorous... a positive engagement with bold shapes, terse lines and colour that reasons with the senses."

"Thirty two years ago this April I visited West Cornwall with a rucksack, a borrowed one man tent, a sleeping bag, a bread knife, sketchbooks, and pens and pencils..." to read more click here

check out new page:
Stephen Writing About Art