STEPH FAWBERT
STEPH FAWBERT
ABOUT
In my compositions, tiny figures teeter on cliff edges, or traverse snowscapes, pause by forest streams or scramble up trees. It is these interactions that interest me. I find deep solace and beauty in nature and I love the juxtaposition of humans and nature which emphasise that we are not separate, but part of the world.
Steph Fawbert is a figurative and landscape painter, working in oils, in both a small and large format. Her paintings deal with memory and with our connections to place and our human relationship with the natural world. Much is made these days about humans belonging to and being part of the natural world rather than seeing it as something other, to be exploited and ’consumed.’ In Steph’s work, humans are enfolded by nature, dwarfed by landscape and immersed in the world around them. There is a strong sense of both the vulnerability and tenacity of humans in our world.
Her paintings suggest that to live fully, humans must interact and face the hazards as well as the gifts of the world around them. They have a cinematic sensibility, both in the scale and in the element of storytelling present in her work. They bring to mind the work of German romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774 - 1840). In his paintings, there tends to be a single or main protagonist, central to the composition often placed in extraordinary natural settings, “ in which the individual is pitted against, or confronted by the overwhelming, incomprehensible immensity of the universe” (Robert Rosenblum).
Steph also places her figures into landscape - contemporary modern landscapes: the dog walker’s woods, the funfairs on a town’s periphery, the beaches, beauty spots and parks recognisable to us all. She works from sketches and photographs of places she knows. The paintings are built up in thin layers and washes of translucent, intense colour which can make the most everyday landscape, become magical and a little unearthly. She allows the paint to drip and blur, adding brush strokes that lead the eye up forest parks, to distant figures crossing landscapes, children pausing by rushing streams, or figures lingering under giant trees. Here is wonder and a filmic sense of edginess.
Something is about to happen.
Sometimes magical, always lyrical, Steph Fawbert’s paintings never drop into sentimentality, but leave us a little haunted by our own place within the world.
Steph gained a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from the University of Newcastle in 1987.
Her painting, Italian Villa, was selected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition which continues until 2nd January 2022 at the Royal Academy of Arts, Piccadilly, London.
She currently lives in Hastings.
SELECTED ARTWORKS
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