Stephen Bishop’s paintings grace homes such as a former London recording studio for stars like John Lennon and luxury homes by the coast. His work is gathering a wide following. Clients say they continually find something new in the richly painted canvases. Collectors include musician PJ Harvey and the sculptor Sir Anthony Caro Royal Academician. Bishop’s work has been shown in the Royal Society of Oil Painters and National Portrait Gallery in London.
The sea and coast of southern England often inspires the artist.
Major influences are European post impressionist and expressionist art, as well as American abstract expressionism. Bishop was born 1963 in England. He is self-taught as an oil painter and has developed his own techniques over many years.
Bishop’s work mixes a poetic painterly abstract aesthetic, combined with a profound love for colour. His style is typified by excitingly textured surfaces. There is strong evidence of a spiritual quest in his body of work. This is sometimes indicated, but not explained by the titles. The artist has described his art, “as a yearning for a connection which can’t be fully grasped. It is a lifelong vocation of experimentation and discovery. I seek emotional intensity combined with sensitivity”.
Time, memory, family and place are central to Stephen Bishop’s paintings. The following lines taken from Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot have particular resonance for the artist.
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
