About

near Staithes, North Yorkshire

Steve Empson was born in Hartlepool in 1953.

He studied landscape architecture at Manchester Polytechnic, and urban design at Oxford Polytechnic.

In 1980 he left his profession and became a full-time painter in 1983.

He is a painter of place. Its colour, its light, its history and its culture.

He began with painting his home environment in the North East of England; its industries and its coast. The highly spiritual nature of the surrounding landscapes of North Yorkshire, the Pennine Hills and Cumbria drew him in.

He now lives in Oxford from where he developed an interest in South Wales and Dungeness; they became subjects he has returned to on several occasions.

During these times he developed an interest in new environments, taking him to Morocco, Greece and Sweden to paint, but it is the Indian sub-Continent that has most captured his attention.

Many visits there have exposed him to its huge range of conditions and challenges, choosing subjects that reveal its depths of history and culture.

After several Indian exhibitions, he continues with his efforts to resolve the relationships of colour and light India offers him, and hopes the result might convey his fervent interest and feelings for the place.

To express his connection with this remarkable country and its people he has recently developed extracts from his diary entries, he calls ‘Encounters’, and publishes them here.