Mountaineer Finds Jewellery in Highland Glen is an early work, executed just after he graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1982.
Steven Campbell
1983
Oil on paper on board
190
218 × 146 cm
231 × 159 cm
Scottish Highlands (2646943)
Signed and dated bottom right
Ⓒ The Artist's Estate
Steven Campbell, 1953-2007
Glasgow-born Campbell was a fitter in a steelworks for seven years before enrolling at Glasgow School of Art. In 1983 a Fullbright Scholarship took him to New York where he lived for five years. He returned to Glasgow, and lived and worked in Stirlingshire until his death in 2007.
Campbell is an exuberant figure painter with an intense creative imagination. He is an improviser, working quickly and allowing the composition to develop, inventing and altering elements as he goes along. Later works are full of a complex esoteric symbolism. They are populated by imaginary characters in imaginary and somewhat nonsensical situations, their arcane titles having only a passing relevance to the painting.