Messum’s have proudly been exhibiting Simon Carter’s compelling paintings since 2010 and during that time our commitment and belief in the extraordinary vision of this East Coast artist has strengthened with each exhibition.
Simon is widely recognised as one of the UK’s leading contemporary artists and his commitment to depicting the Essex coastline has recently been marked with the invitation to exhibit, alongside fellow artist Jevan Watkins Jones, at the widely admired Firstsite gallery, the East of England's leading contemporary visual arts gallery.
The exhibition ‘Shorelines’, which opened in December, runs until 22nd June and we heartily encourage our collectors and followers to visit and explore this collaboration which celebrates the Essex and Suffolk coastlines through the eyes of these two distinctive artists.
"Simon Carter is one of the most prominent and significant artists living and working in the East Anglian region today. In his daily walks in the landscape Simon is often sketching vigorously and energetically - attempting to inhale what he sees through his eyes and send it out through his hands as marks on paper. Later these marks are translated onto canvas and paper where colour is deployed to evoke the distinctive light and character of the landscape of Simon’s home."
Sally Shaw MBE Director, Firstsite
Above: Firstsite in Colchester, The Fine Art Fund's Museum of the Year in 2021, images courtesy of Fine Art Fund.
The unique concept of the exhibition ‘Shorelines’ encourages the viewer to imagine two artists on opposite shorelines communicating through drawings; the drawn lines leaving the paper and floating across a five-mile stretch of salt-water to merge and morph on the surface.
This notion was the starting point for Simon Carter and Jevan Watkins Jones’ exhibition of collaborative charcoal drawings ‘Shore Lines’, which draws upon the artists’ experience of the Essex and Suffolk coastlines exploring individual and shared perceptions observations of the landscape. For more than two years Simon and Jevan have been drawing from their respective coastlines of Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex and Landguard Point, Suffolk. This new series of large-scale charcoal drawings sees the artists work together collaboratively in the same space, laying the paper on the studio floor and working simultaneously but from opposite sides, as if the paper was the sea.
Each artist begins with an image from their own landscape, then pushes these images out across the whole sheet, working into each other’s territory, letting go of individual ownership and trusting the drawing. The framed charcoals sit on two drawings reproduced to fill the entire wall.
Housed in the spectacular golden building designed by Rafael Vinoly Architects, Firstsite showcases a wide variety of impressive artworks from internationally recognised artists to more locally relevant exhibitions. The museum was voted ‘Museum of the Year’ in 2021 by the Fine Art Fund Fund.
Above: Images of Simon Cater on the Essex Marshlands, images by Noah Carter
Simon Carter and the diminishing Essex Coastal Marshes
The coastal marshes of Essex are disappearing rapidly, with up to 60 per cent having been eroded by the sea in the last 20 years and there is no-one better positioned to recognise these changes in the landscape than resident artist Simon Carter who has been recording this part of the British coastline his entire life. His expansive paintings explore the rich diversity and changing face of the the stretch from Clacton to The Naze and turning inland, to the backwaters of Hamford Water and the area around Beaumont Quay, just beyond Landermere. The clear waters and grasslands combine to create a secluded coastal landscape which has captured the imaginations of writers, artists, and film directors alike. Here Eduardo Paolozzi and Nigel Henderson worked on many of their early collaborations in the mid1950s as Hammer Prints, and more recently, the painter Luke Elwes has used Landermere as a base for his abstracted meditations on water and reflections. It’s an intriguing area of islands and inlets, of salt marshes and mudflats, of beaches, marsh grasslands and creeks and yet this land is quickly disappearing as sea levels rise.
Each day Simon Carter makes drawings about things happening in the landscape; often returning to the same places for months at a time, sometimes just walking and seeing what happens. He uses these drawings in the studio to improvise and rehearse possible ways to turn observation into painting. The paintings actually begin with drawing in front of the motif, but the crucial aspect is then the studio time spent considering these plein-air drawings.
"My landscape is centred on a short stretch of the North Essex Coast. It is a place that I have grown up with. It is not dramatic or particularly picturesque but a place where agriculture gradually gives way to grazing marsh and golf links, to saltings and mud flats, low cliffs and then the beach"
The Artist, Simon Carter
"It is only back in the studio that I can see whether there is anything of interest or use in the day’s drawings" says Carter. Now the process of re-interpretation begins, of translating marks on paper to more marks on paper, and eventually to marks on canvas. Carter comments: "I find the act of drawing in the landscape not only provides a record of information but also opens a gap between what is seen and what is painted."
Carter draws quickly and naturally, with enviable spontaneity. Painting, by contrast, is an intense and lengthy process. The colours he uses are sumptuous, subtle, direct, sensitive. Carter mixes them on his palette, then mixes them some more on the canvas.
"There’s a rowdiness to some of his paintwork, a kiss-me-quick tease and daring; in other passages, the paint is sonorously tonal, even grand."
Andrew Lambirth Author and art critic
Simon’s contribution to the arts in the East Coast of England is widely recognized. He studied art in Colchester and London and returned to Essex, where he was born and raised and continues to live and work. He was Artist in Residence at the University of Essex, Cuckoo Farm Studios and Firstsite, Colchester and has undertaken numerous curatorial projects, most recently at Maidstone Museum and Art Gallery and Brentwood Cathedral in Essex. In 2013 he collaborated with artist Robert Priseman to form the artist led group Contemporary British Painting and then the ‘East Contemporary Art Collection’, the first dedicated collection of contemporary art for the East of England which is housed at the University of Suffolk, Ipswich. Simon Carter is President of Colchester Art Society.
A Poem for Simon Carter
The last
Messages of light
From sky to water
Echo
Over the mud-flats
Forking new diagrams
Between arms of the sea
On ground opened
To the embrace of water
Crepuscular in the thunderlight
Swishing from bruise to rose
All redolent of flux
Dispelling respite with
A drifting cargo of thought.
By Andrew Lambirth, November 2017
Below: Watch the recent film of Simon Carter's exhibition at Messum's St. James's in July '20
Below: Watch Simon Carter, at work in his studio, prior to his 2020 show at Messum's St. James's. Film by Noah Carter.
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