A summary of work since 1977
A summary of work done since 1977
Julia griffin
Stephen’s early etchings used the gorge country near Walcha as a means to explore aquatint and the etched line. He adopted Fred Williams’ gestural tree language to describe his shared love of the eucalypt. After graduating from SCA, Stephen produced a series of colour etchings at St Martins College, London. These depicted the life of an old bushman from his family farm and sought to romanticise the honesty of Old Ted’s working day. The Shearing series of 1983 also described the workings of the woolshed as a thing of rhythmic beauty.
Although his first sculpture The Digger travelled NSW in the 1976 Art Express exhibition he did not start to make sculpture for another six years when he experimented with figurative constructions and conceptual pieces using animal carcasses to make large acrylic monoprints on canvas. He was describing the devastating effects of the drought. With titles like the Black Shepherd and Cold Snap 9th October 1982, the unforgiving nature of the weather and man’s attempts to tame the land became a theme that Stephen has continued to revisit in both his prints and sculpture.
By the late 1980’s his linocuts were questioning how we farm the land. You’d get five strainers out of that one and Man going along chopping down lots of trees are examples of how he used humour and story-telling to make a bold statement with a resonant message that can be seen from both sides of the argument. In the Nature Fights Back series of 2005 The Disemboweling and Bad Dog are so explicit in their message that the effect is comical.
Religious themes have also been recurrent since the late 70’s. The Thrasher meets the Pearly Gates of 1987 and The Second Coming of 2002 address the issue of redemption and who will pay for their sins. The series Big Business comments on the selfish nature of ambition and the Stargazer series explores the problem with blind faith.
As a grazier he became interested in genetics and the continuum of life. When Iceman was discovered he made a series of sculptures exploring the idea of man’s heredity and the unravelling of our genetic make-up. Generation Stick, DNA and Beginning are all studies of life and humanity.
Stephen uses the everyday of rural life to give an insight to the industry of working the land. The Log Roller series is a tribute to human endeavour and etchings like It’s red-legged earth-mite and Let’s call it a day describe ordinary moments in the day of a farmer.
Most recently Stephen has been addressing climate change. Carbon Trader shows the debate as a juggling act with big business coming in to play using it as just another new commodity. Personal issues are woven into world issues. Two people fighting, Man and Child and First Kiss are about personal relationships but they also allude to time and the Zen idea of the wings of a butterfly and the ripple effect. Even more intimate is Hello Mate, a portrait of Stephen’s horse Bert who died during the making of the sculpture.
Currently he is working on non-figurative constructions which open and close as you move around them and suggest the idea of the infinite rather than the closed and finite shape of the figure.