Abdi TEst Record
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Popular culture is presently abound with the re-visiting of the dark, Gothic, bedtime fairytale, settling down alongside the vampiric clan of teenage-friendly tomes of late. In this aesthetical environment Simon Casson has cast aside as history, his fascination with the Classical World, to warmly embrace the old Somerset dialect and folklore which circle his rural home. "Smeech and Hrain", the title of the exhibition uses the atmospheric sensation of the words translating as smoke and rain.
The apple orchard or artchet, with it's lines of stumpy horror movie trees, hanging heavy with the last diminutive apples of the year, lies cloaked with damp smoldering smeech. Old spent leaves are burnt to signal the end of the season, but never the apple wood as this would be to insight the anger of the preternatural predators amongst the cider barrels. The West Country is a county brimming with myth and legend, much of it concerning agriculture and fertility. Superstition reigns supreme, as fairy rings or gallitraps trace the earth beneath the boughs bearing fruit. Legend tells of other-worldly creatures with their lilliputian fingers troubling country lives, over the multi-layered phantasmal threshold of reality beyond the dimmet or twilight.
Fantastical landscape, combining the English pastural scene with an almost theatrical metaphysical back drop, lies behind the constructed situation of figure and still life
The paintings are each entitled with words torn from the old Somerset dialect, centuries in use, to lay shafts of light onto the players behind the staged scenes. Pale pultritudinous, blanketed in blossoms, surrounded by multi-layered drapery, stare out from the canvas, their identity obscured by paint smirches, smeared with fingers and brushes, allowing them to represent the ideal female, their full chronicles withheld. The pheasant and the deer emerge from the hedgerow, to engage with the viewer in the transcendental play, with paint itself playing a pivotal role - as talismanic as the charismatic dialect, the characters and the landscape.
Simon Casson was born in York, UK in 1965 and was raised in Zambia. He completed his BA in Fine Art at Exeter College of Art and Design with a First Class Honors, then moved on to Central Saint Martins to study for a Postgraduate Diploma in Printmaking. His education was completed with three years studying at the Royal Academy Schools in London, gaining an M.A at the Painting Schools (MFA). He now lives and works in rural Somerset, with his wife Sheridan, their three daughters, a dalmatian and a flock of chickens.
The apple orchard or artchet, with it's lines of stumpy horror movie trees, hanging heavy with the last diminutive apples of the year, lies cloaked with damp smoldering smeech. Old spent leaves are burnt to signal the end of the season, but never the apple wood as this would be to insight the anger of the preternatural predators amongst the cider barrels. The West Country is a county brimming with myth and legend, much of it concerning agriculture and fertility. Superstition reigns supreme, as fairy rings or gallitraps trace the earth beneath the boughs bearing fruit. Legend tells of other-worldly creatures with their lilliputian fingers troubling country lives, over the multi-layered phantasmal threshold of reality beyond the dimmet or twilight.
Fantastical landscape, combining the English pastural scene with an almost theatrical metaphysical back drop, lies behind the constructed situation of figure and still life
The paintings are each entitled with words torn from the old Somerset dialect, centuries in use, to lay shafts of light onto the players behind the staged scenes. Pale pultritudinous, blanketed in blossoms, surrounded by multi-layered drapery, stare out from the canvas, their identity obscured by paint smirches, smeared with fingers and brushes, allowing them to represent the ideal female, their full chronicles withheld. The pheasant and the deer emerge from the hedgerow, to engage with the viewer in the transcendental play, with paint itself playing a pivotal role - as talismanic as the charismatic dialect, the characters and the landscape.
Simon Casson was born in York, UK in 1965 and was raised in Zambia. He completed his BA in Fine Art at Exeter College of Art and Design with a First Class Honors, then moved on to Central Saint Martins to study for a Postgraduate Diploma in Printmaking. His education was completed with three years studying at the Royal Academy Schools in London, gaining an M.A at the Painting Schools (MFA). He now lives and works in rural Somerset, with his wife Sheridan, their three daughters, a dalmatian and a flock of chickens.
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