at The Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead, Wirral throughout 2025
We are thrilled to inform our clients that painter, Steve des Landes, will be taking up a new studio post at the Williamson Art Gallery in Birkenhead as part of their inaugural Artist In Residence programme for 2025.
New for 2025, the Artist In Residence initiative aims to bring visitors closer to the artistic process. Over the course of the year the public will have the opportunity to observe des Landes working from his studio within the gallery, and find out more about the process through regular engagement sessions, which will offer the opportunity to speak to the artist.
Asked about what he’s looking forward to most about the year, des Landes says:
“I am looking forward to the opportunity to work within the Williamson. This experience potentially gives me the chance to create a change to my daily routine, disrupting my existing approach and process. I intend to focus on ideas for paintings that demand a larger scale, to take full advantage of the much larger working environment. During the year-long residency I would like to create a studio environment that reflects a experimental and playful space, where my ideas can develop through public interaction and engagement."
Steve des Landes paints people and landscapes filled with angst, uncertainty, anguish and hope; he reveals romance and disappointment; opportunity and failure; fear and fable. His people seem to be preoccupied; life seems to be elsewhere. He is – as his work boldly attests – an artist with an extraordinary personal vision. At a time when painting is once again re-establishing its importance, he is a new force to be reckoned with. If you were to place him in a group, it would be alongside Glasgow School artists such as Stephen Campbell, Ken Currie and Peter Howson – gritty urban realists painting the anxieties of modernity.
Left: Steve des Landes (b.1962) The Golden Oriole, 2022, oil on canvas, 122 x 122 cm
Right: Steve des Landes (b.1962) Pieta, 2022, oil on canvas, 122 x 122 cm
"For me, a painting begins with fear. The image is already inside his head – the vision of what it will be. The fear is in wondering whether he will succeed in expressing that vision. He has ‘a traffic jam’ of visions and ideas in his head right now, each work leading inexorably on to a new one. Beautiful, disturbing, perplexing, romantic, torn – in turn they are all these things."
Steve has previously held a solo exhibition, Unsettled, at the Williamson in 2018, as well as two solo exhibitions in 2020 and 2022 at David Messum Fine Art in St. James's. His residency at Williamson begins this month and will continue until December. Please ensure you sign up to our newsletter and keep an eye on our blog, Behind the Canvas, where we will provide news and updates on Steve's progress.
Watch our short film produced during Steve des Lande's 2020 exhibition at our St. James's gallery, including commentary from both the artist and David Messum.
To accompany our 2020 exhibition, Steve's first West London exhibition, a fully illustrated catalogue was produced with an introductory essay commissioned from Author and Curator, David Boyd Haycock.
Exploring Steve's youth in the Northwest, his early influences and his life in former creative hub that was the Holmes Buildings Studios in Liverpool, the catalogue presents an insight into Steve's complete working practice as a figurative painter.
Full lists of available works by Steve des Landes are available online,
or enquire at our gallery in St. James's
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