Winner of the prestigious John Moores Painting Prize, local artist Michael Simpson has been the subject of solo exhibitions at major galleries and museums in London, Berlin, and Shanghai, and his work is in many public and private collections including Tate.
This exhibition is the first to focus exclusively on the artist’s work on paper, exploring Simpson’s approach to drawing as a route to what a painting might be. Made in a range of different media on a variety of materials, these drawings reveal how Simpson’s ideas emerge and grow over time. His primary concern is with ‘the mechanics of painting’. He says, ‘despite the subjective references in my work, I believe a painting must move beyond its subject and, for me, formal considerations are paramount’.
The display will reflect Simpson’s career-long interest in certain images, in particular the Leper Squint, the Confessional, and the Bench, each reflecting his impassioned belief in ‘the infamy of religious history’.