Stephen Chambers RA
Stephen Chambers studied at Winchester School of Art from 1978 to 1979 and then at St Martin's School of Art from 1979 to 1982. He graduated with a Masters from Chelsea School of Art in 1983, was elected to the Royal Academy in 2005 and in 2016 he was awarded an honorary fellowship by Downing College, Cambridge. In 2017 he is to become the first British artist to hold an exhibition at the Palazzo Dondola as part of the 57th International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale.
His work concentrates on arrangements of flat patterns are placed in expertly pleasing arrays of geometry. The central subjects are haloed with bold, and extraordinarily uplifting colour combinations. Areas of the pictures are increasingly overlaid with carefully applied pattern taken from traditions of ornament in western and eastern art. Dots or spots like fireflies represent clusters of energy or nature’s imperfection. The stillness of the images makes the gestures of anxiety or tension slower to realise.