Steven Pooley Artist Statement
I have always been involved with art and design and from my earliest memories, I would sit and draw for hours. This fascination lead to me complete a Diploma in Art and Design course in my teenage years and I then went onto study Furniture Design/Making at Loughborough College of Art and Design (UK). After graduating and practising as a furniture and interior designer in the UK, I was inspired to travel through the African continent on the way to Australia and through this journey from Nairobi to Cape Town experienced many visually inspiring scenes, which re-ignited my desire to paint and draw landscapes.
Over the last 10 years I have developed my landscape paintings by painting En Plein Air and my work has evolved from an Impression style to be more abstract and progressed from small to larger sized work. I’m influenced by French Fauvism use of heightened colour, David Hockney spirited lines and by the Canadian Group of Seven Artists translation of extreme landscapes. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting and drawing for hours and this led me to my art and design vocation. When I migrated to Australia the intense light inspired me to create artwork with strident colours, planes and shapes intended to create an emotional incarnation of the place and time.
I never feel more alive than when concentrating on an En Plein Air painting and experiencing the amazing West Australian landscape, shoreline and seascape which are the source of inspiration for my paintings.