Simeon Stafford
(born 1956)
Simeon Stafford was born in 1956, in Duckinfield, a small northern town bordering the Pennines. He was introduced to L.S.Lowry after winning the Robert Owen School Award for Art and the Manchester News Portrait Award, who then became a friend of the family and encouraged him to study art. In 1972 and 1973, he studied at Hyde College and in 1974, became a professional artist and exhibited his work in mixed exhibitions throughout the north of England and London. His work at this time reflected the gritty northern landscape and characters in what has been called a primitive style. In 1996 Stafford moved to Cornwall where he met the artists Terry Frost and Patrick Heron, whose colour and light had a great impact on him. Simeon continues to have successful exhibitions in London and Cornwall. In 2001 his work was included in the Royal Academy Summer exhibition and in 2003 he became a member of the Birmingham Society of Artists.
While Stafford’s paintings share a visual simplicity with Lowry’s iconic northern street scenes, his reference points are far removed from the industrial backgrounds of where they both grew up. Conversely, his relocation to Cornwall gave Stafford’s work a defining, alternative mood – both liberated from the muggy northern towns whilst also painting in recognition of Lowry’s bustling crowds. Furthermore, it was in Cornwall where he met and was influenced by notable St. Ives painters such as Sir Terry Frost and Patrick Heron. Stafford’s work can be seen as the confluence of Lowry’s simple and naive approach coupled with the vibrancy and jocularity of the Cornish artists.
Stafford’s career started early, aged 14 he won the Robert Owen Schools Award for Art and also the Manchester Evening News’s Portrait Award. Throughout 1972 and 1973 Stafford studied art at Hyde College. His tutor was Christine Kendall, the wife of the art historian Richard Kendall. In 1974 Stafford became a professional artist and exhibited his work in mixed exhibitions throughout the North of England and London
‘Stafford’s work is not ‘heavy,’ we see no dark overcast days, political content or deep soul searching angst. He says ‘we have enough that in the world of news today.’ No, Stafford’s world of pictorial imagery is a world of humour and fun, an essence of spontaneity that is joyfully translated to the viewer. Simeon Stafford is an observer of life, his paintings are crammed full of incidents and accidents, bustling scenes of human interaction, a happy dialogue of work and play. If his paintings are studied you will discover figures re-occurring, skipping Ruby with pig-tails, Eric and his tractor, Dot, the little girl cart-wheeling across the canvas (his aunt as a child) sometimes a man with red stripy trousers marching through a crowd, leading a small boy by the hand, (the artist with his son). These figures are bought to life and become characters’ to look out for. Locations become a fusion of the artist’s actual environment, subtly mixed with snippets of landmarks from his past, creating his distinctive style.
Simeon Stafford’s subjects include docks and their workers, holiday seaside scenes and streets crammed with children playing. There is a nostalgic echo to these paintings that each and every one of us can identify with, an essence that captures the excitement and expectation, of any old day seen through a child’s eyes.’
