Simon Carter (b.1961)
Hipkin’s Beach, 2013, Acrylic on canvas, 70 x 80 cm, Signed and dated on reverse
[CAS 69]
Biography
Simon Carter was born in Chelmsford, Essex in 1961. He went to school at Colchester Royal Grammar School studying under David Trenow (1), then attended Colchester Institute where he went on an art foundation course for a year from 1980 to 1981. In 1981 he went to North East London Polytechnic, where he studied Fine Art obtaining a BA (Hons) in Fine Art in 1984. From 1985 to 2000 Simon worked as a part-time postman in Frinton-on-Sea, Essex. Since 2000 he has painted full time. Apart from extensively exhibiting in the UK and the United States, Simon has curated a number of exhibitions including two at Ipswich Art School Gallery, Suffolk, and one at Brentwood Cathedral and at Cuckoo Farm Studios, Colchester. He was awarded a RHS Gold Medal with Thomas Hoblyn at Hampton Court in 2006 for a show garden. Thomas Hoblyn and Simon collaborated on the development and design of Volvo: the Artist’s Garden. Simon also appeared on East Life in 2003, an Anglian Television cultural magazine program hosted by Rowland Rivron and featured in Coastal Inspirations, a cultural journey around the East Anglian coast, on Anglia Television in 2006. Simon has works in numerous public collections in the UK and abroad (see list below). He was artist in residence at Firstsite in 2000, Cuckoo Farm Studios in 2007 and the University of Essex in 2014, and in 2005 received a prestigious Escalator Visual Arts award from the Arts Council England East and Commissions East.
He first became a member of the Society in 1990 and was elected President of Colchester Art Society in 2015.
Statement
This example of Carter's work was painted on the seven-mile stretch of coast near Frinton-on-Sea where the artist currently rents a studio. Hipkin's Beach is a small privately-owned section of beach at Walton-on-the-Naze. Principally a landscape painter depicting scenes of Essex where he lives, Carter makes drawings in situ, often on the beach, and selects varied elements of the drawings which he later investigates and transfers into finished paintings, the method of transference becoming as much a part of the development process as the original subject. This particular work started in winter when the artist was watching waves washing over the foot of the slipway with a section of sea wall snaking away on the right. Looking, sketching and painting are actions and choices through which Carter interprets space and its visual components within the act of painting itself and these landscapes lie between subject matter and abstraction, reflecting the artist's perceptual and psychological experience of the world. The dark green tones of this work derive from a series of Venetian paintings by Cy Twombley (1928-2011) which were exhibited in 2008 at the Tate Modern show: Cy Twombley: Cycles and Seasons.
Selected Solo Exhibitions
1992, 2002, 2007, Chappel Galleries, Chappel, Essex
1993 Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury
1994 Bury St Edmunds Gallery, Suffolk
2000, 2003 Firstsite, Colchester, Essex
2001, 2007 North House Gallery, Manningtree, Essex
2006 RHS, Hampton Court Palace Show
2007 Horace Blue, Norwich, Norfolk
2008 Town Hall Galleries, Ipswich, Suffolk
2008, 2010 Walton Fine Art, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
2009, 2011, 2013, 2015 Messum’s London
2010, 2014 University of Essex Gallery
2013 St Marylebone Parish Church, London
2016 SEA Foundation, Tilburg, The Netherlands
Selected Joint and Mixed Exhibitions
1988 The Minories, Colchester
1993 Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk
1997 Wolsey Gallery, Ipswich, Suffolk and firstsite, Colchester
1998-9 The British Lime Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
1998 The City Gallery, London
2000 The University of Essex
2001 Chelmsford cathedral
2002 Chappel Galleries, Chappel, Essex
2005, 2010, 2011 The Mall galleries, London
2007 Agnew’s, London
2007, 2010 Royal Academy of Arts Summer Exhibition
2008, 2012, 2014 Messum’s, London;
2009, 2015 North House Gallery
2011, 2012, 2014, 2015 Messum’s, Art Toronto, Canada
Works in Public Collections
Essex
Art for Loan, Essex County Libraries
Epping Forest District Museum
New Hall School, Chelmsford, Essex
Priseman Seabrook Collection of 21st Century British Painting, Wivenhoe
University of Essex
Suffolk
Copleston High School, Ipswich
East Contemporary Art, University Campus
Ipswich Borough Council
King Edward VI School, Bury St. Edmunds
Salthouse Harbour Hotel, Ipswich
SCILS Gallery, Suffolk County Libraries
St. Edmundsbury Borough Council
The rest of UK
Abbot Hall, Kendal, Cumbria
Dorset House School of Occupational Therapy, Oxford
Falmouth Art Gallery, Cornwall
Rugby Museum and Art Gallery, Warwickshire
Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, Wiltshire
The USA
Komechak Art Gallery, Benedictine University, Chicago
Madison Museum of Fine Arts, Georgia
Bibliography
BUCKMAN, David, Dictionary of artists in Britain since 1945, Art Dictionaries Ltd, Bristol, 1998, p. 240
CARTER, Simon, New East Anglian Painting, 2012
CARTER, Simon, @PaintBritain: 45 contemporary painters, 2014
CARTER, Simon, Contemporary British Watercolours, 2015
CARTER, Simon, The Brentwood Stations of the Cross, 2015
(All four published by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform)
COLLINS, Ian, Water Marks, Art in East Anglia, Black Dog Books, 2010, pp 139-142 (7 ill.)
Also reviews and articles in The Spectator, Essex Life and Arts Review
(1) David Trenow is an artist, sculptor, folklorist and singer. He is the former Head of Art at Colchester Royal Grammar School. He lives in Colchester and regularly exhibits his work.