Steven Campbell Mountaineer Finds Jewellery in Highland Glen ca. 1982 oil on paper Fleming Collection, London |
Steven Campbell Steel Moustache and the Axe 1982 oil on paper Dundee Art Galleries and Museums |
Steven Campbell Gesturing Hiker with a Furnace 1983 oil on board City Art Centre, Edinburgh |
Steven Campbell Eagles Are Attracted by Disaster 1983 oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art |
Steven Campbell Young Man Surrendering to the Landscape 1983 oil on canvas Glasgow Museums |
Steven Campbell The Fall of the House of Nook with Tree Blight 1984 oil on canvas Southampton City Art Gallery |
Steven Campbell Two Gardeners in an Impromptu Carnival Atmosphere 1984 oil on canvas Yale Center for British Art |
"Steven Campbell was a Scottish artist who created complex and humorous paintings with roots in performance and installation art. Campbell graduated from the Glasgow School of Art in 1982 and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the Pratt Institute in New York the same year. The artist rapidly gained recognition in America, and after a successful period abroad returned to Glasgow in 1987. He remained in Scotland for the rest of his career. . . . During the 1980s Campbell's work weaved a narrative of recurring figures in a somewhat surreal and disordered world. The stocky, tweed-clad male characters are philosophers, artists, and architects who navigate this puzzling, paradoxical world in search of meaning. . . . During the 1990s figurative painting fell out of vogue with a new generation of artists. . . . This was a difficult period for Campbell, and his work of this time reflects both his personal struggles and a reaction to societal difficulties. The clown-like humour and wit is replaced with a dark irony and more explicit distress."
– from biographical notes at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Steven Campbell Gardening Barbers Debating in a Small Airplane Garden 1985 oil on canvas Aberdeen Art Gallery |
Steven Campbell A Man Perceived by a Flea 1985 oil on canvas Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh |
Steven Campbell The Dangerous Early and Late Life of Lytton Strachey 1985 oil on canvas Tate Modern, London |
Steven Campbell Napoleonic Silhouettist Cutting the Progress of the War 1986-87 oil on canvas Southbank Centre, London |
Steven Campbell Three Men Exactly the Same Size in an Unequal Room 1987 oil on canvas Leeds Art Gallery, Yorkshire |
Steven Campbell Painting in Defense of Migrants 1993 oil on canvas Glasgow Museums |
Steven Campbell Bill Forsyth, Film Producer 1995 oil on canvas Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh |
Steven Campbell The Emotional Detectives 1996 oil, acrylic and ceramic on canvas Glasgow Museums |