Stephen Chambers moves between the figurative and abstract, the decorative and minimal. He creates exquisitely crafted paintings that are a feast for the imagination. The artist’s colourful figures are captured in a world of flat planes radiating intense, seductive colour and pattern where our natural laws are disturbed. Chambers fashions a very personal and poetic language that seduces the viewer’s attention, where curiosity is overcome, ideas and thoughts overwhelmed and a sense of recognition in the imagination is evoked. Chambers has said that his work “speaks of states of mind, behaviours and sensibilities”. The artist wants us to recognise his own personal experiences, his memories of childishness tinged with a darker adult knowing, his deepest fears. These are vignettes of archetypal fairy tales. The sheer beauty of the artwork pulls us into Stephen Chambers’ strange and complex world.
British painter and printmaker Stephen Chambers lives and works in London and Berlin. He was born in London and 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. Chambers has won many scholarships and awards, including a Rome Scholarship, a Fellowship at Winchester School of Art and a Mark Rothko Memorial Trust Award. Chambers has also collaborated on three dance projects with the Royal Ballet: 'Sleeping with Audrey' in 1996, 'Room of Cooks' in 1997 and 1999, and 'This House Will Burn' in 2001.
Stephen Chambers’ major art projects include ‘The Big Country & Other Stories’ at the Pera Museum in Istanbul in 2014, ‘The Big Country’ at the Royal Academy of Arts, London in 2012 and ‘The Court of Redonda’, a large portrait series first shown during the 2017 Venice Biennale and subsequently at The Heong Gallery at Downing College in Cambridge. He has a long association with Downing College, having been Artist in Residence at Kettle’s Yard in 1998, and in 2016 he received an Honorary Fellowship from them. In 2005 he was elected a Royal Academician by the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Artwork by Stephen Chambers is held in many major national and international collections. He is a Trustee of both The Bryan Robertson Trust and The Koestler Trust.