60cm × 45cm, Oil on canvas (2011)
My practice uses the once-familiar locations of my Shropshire childhood (now distant / estranged both geographically and in time), as the basis for an investigation into landscape and Englishness, using drawing, painting and film.
My work is informed by both historical and contemporary sources ranging from old postcards, slides, guidebooks and literary sources, to contemporary photographs taken by my parents or other family members at my request.
My practice also has a figurative element: I use the landscape, already loaded with personal remembrance, 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.