Elizabeth Simson

Elizabeth Simson Bio

I studied and then went on to lecture in fine art at Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, Wiltshire in the 1950s and 1960s, at a time when it was pioneering art education with its refreshing anti-academy approach. I have always been interested in art that contains or suggests a narrative. To me this is crucial in stirring the imagination. I have a keen interest in social class structures and conventions and I love the paintings of Paul Nash and of Samuel Palmer for the way they work with the symbolic image, and of Matisse and Miro, for their strong sense of individuality and playful ingenuity. Recently I have become especially interested in artists books as they push the boundaries of inventiveness in content and form.

As a child I always loved books and still do, I believe that through their text, illustrations and content, books are wonderful and very precious.

I am a keen traveller and enjoy the work and forms of cultures different to my own, which I have documented in the many photographic series I have made over the course of my travels. One of my projects includes compiling many of my photographs of the snake paintings found on Northwest Indian Shrines into a book form, as part of my interest in Indian Folk Art. Recently I have been working on illustrations based on Noaha's flood and I mean to expand the idea of flood to roads, cars, people, pollution and viruses. Other key interests include Children's Books, Ethnography, Early Maps, and Toys.

As well as working with the photographic image I am also a keen painter and printmaker, creating work that is abstract in nature and is primarily concerned with landscape, skyscape, and figures that suggest movement within these spaces. Although I draw from a tradition of British Surrealism, my work is also influenced by the natural forms and colours found in traditional Indian print fabric. It considers the relationship between painted or printed space and experience; vision that is at once drawn from the imagination and from reason or understanding. My screenprints, despite being more graphic in style than my paintings, maintain and share their sense of the poetic.