My practice is an investigation of the affective power of place. I make paintings of the rural landscapes of my childhood, places that are connected to my personal history. The pictures are set in the present time, using contemporary source material, largely photographs taken by my parents or other family members at my request, so that there are layers of involvement in the starting point of each painting.
My practice also has a figurative element. I use the landscape, already loaded with my own personal rememberance, as a context within which to paint the situations of others. I paint teenage youths, placed and positioned in the landscape in order to discover, through painting, the territory that was once mine and is now theirs, their bravado and vulnerability playing out against the landscape that is shaping them.
Stephen is an MA graduate of Central St Martins and lives and works in Hackney, East London.