simon casson exhibition brochure

Simon Casson - Drashel20th July - 10th August 2013

www.hiltonfineart.com

Front cover: detail from Drashel, Urbem, oil on canvas, 87 x 94cm

detail from Study for Drashel IIoil on gesso primed paper48 x 69cm£1,000

Simon Casson - Drashel20th July - 10th August 2013

Private View - Friday 19th July6pm - 8pmRSVP

Hilton Fine Art 5 Margaret’s Buildings Bath BA1 2LP01225 311311 info@hiltonfineart.com www.hiltonfineart.com

Popular culture is presently abound with the re-visiting of the dark, Gothic, bedtime fairytale, settling down alongside the vampiric clan of teenage-friendly tomes of late. In this aesthetical environment Simon Casson has cast aside as history, his fascination with the Classical World, to warmly embrace the old Somerset dialect and folklore which circle his rural home. “Drashel”, the title of the exhibition uses the atmospheric sensation of the word translating as ‘threshold’.

The apple orchard or artchet, with it’s lines of stumpy horror movie trees, hanging heavy with the last diminutive apples of the year, lies cloaked with damp smoldering smeech. Old spent leaves are burnt to signal the end of the season, but never the apple wood as this would be to insight the anger of the preternatural predators amongst the cider barrels. The West Country is a county brimming with myth and legend, much of it concerning agriculture and fertility. Superstition reigns supreme, as fairy rings or gallitraps trace the earth beneath the boughs bearing fruit. Legend tells of other-worldly creatures with their lilliputian fingers troubling country lives, over the multi-layered phantasmal threshold of reality beyond the dimmet or twilight.

Fantastical landscape, combining the English pastoral scene with an almost theatrical metaphysical back drop, lies behind the constructed situation of figure and still life. The paintings are each entitled with words torn from the old Somerset dialect, centuries in use, to lay shafts of light onto the players behind the staged scenes. Pale pultrilitious lasses, blanketed in blossoms, surrounded by multi-layered drapery, stare out from the canvas, their identity obscured by paint smirches, smeared with fingers and brushes, allowing them to represent the ideal female, their full chronicles withheld. The pheasant and the deer emerge from the hedgerow, to engage with the viewer in the transcendental play, with paint itself playing a pivotal role - as talismanic as the charismatic dialect, the characters and the landscape.

Simon Casson

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Drashel, Urbem, oil on canvas, 87x94cm£4,500

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Study for Drashel, Bath I, oil on gesso primed paper, 48 x 69cm£1,000

Study for Drashel, Bath II, oil on gesso primed paper, 48 x 69cm£1,000

Study for Drashel, Bath III, oil on gesso primed paper, 48 x 69cm£1,000

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Sname, oil on canvas, 81 x 94cm£4,500

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Artchet II, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm£2,000

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Litsome, oil on canvas, 60 x 80cm£4,000

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Woak, oil on board, 81 x 94cm£4,500

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Culver, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm£2,000

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Mither Ho, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm£2,000

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Blissom VII, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm£2,000

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Blissom VII, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm£2,000

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Fabula Pentamerone I, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm£2,000

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Lupercalia (Study) IV, charcoal, conte and gesso on paper 56 x 76cm£1,250

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Study for Drashel, Bath IV, oil on gesso primed paper, 48 x 69cm£1,000

Study for Drashel, Bath V, oil on gesso primed paper, 48 x 69cm£1,000

Study for Smeech and Hrain I, oil on gesso primed paper, 48 x 69cm£1,000

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Hesione XV, screeprint on somerset satin, 76 x 57cm £400

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Hesione XIII, screeprint on somerset satin, 76 x 57cm £400

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Hilton Fine Art 5 Margaret’s Buildings Bath BA1 2LP01225 311311 info@hiltonfineart.com www.hiltonfineart.com