Constantly shifting between reality and reinvention, often several times in the same picture—my paintings explore Hackney and east London locations that are often agitated or persuasive, and possessed by qualities not immediately identifiable or explicable. An urban entanglement loaded with histories and associations, some barely perceptible or ‘only in the eye of the beholder’, some immersive and inescapable.
My work is underpinned by the dense network of tension which pervades much of east London. In recent years, I am aware that property development and the construction industry contribute to this atmosphere in no insignificant way, setting up fresh dynamics on ground already affected by change and history.
I engage with such locations through a process of reimagining. In this way, my paintings become an interpretative mirror or filter, an investigation of place that aims for a shared vantage point and direct communicatory approach. The places are recognisable—as hard-edged as the locations themselves, and a certain clarity is sought. I want the paint to carry the idea and atmosphere of the location to the viewer, not hide it from them.
The resulting images are perhaps latent landscapes—the flip side of any cursory glance or superficial view, enabling place/landscape to reveal both itself, and our situation within it, anew.
Stephen is an MA graduate of Central St Martins and lives and works in Hackney, East London.
“Stephen Harwood is a necessary witness. Soliciting a point of vantage in our constantly degrading and renewing landscape.”
“No good is going to come of these churning clouds and atmospheric lesions. Or, for that matter, of the land and water beneath them. Stephen Harwood’s pejorism is as thrilling as it is despairing. The style, ‘the marks’, are uniquely brutal. But then so are the subjects they represent or, rather, invent. This is painting as menace.”
“There are few painters who have so well divined the true life of the city and, by an act of astonishing intuition, have been able to unite the past and present, mythology and reality, in artistic communion.
Stephen Harwood’s work is filled with the energy and momentum of the city itself… He is one of London’s finest interpreters.”
“Marvellous pictures—really fantastic landscapes. The best London townscapes of all time!”
“Your work is not my cup of tea.”