Part of the New Light Prize Exhibition 2020

Steven Heaton’s work challenges our preconceived familiarity with the environment that surrounds us, our placement within it and the permanence of memories we access to reflect on and balance our lives. Natural form, structure and colour are broken down into basic constructs, rearranged and reordered to resonate outside the normal frequency, offering an alternative viewpoint and a deeper subconscious understanding, a quiet approach to the often misplaced and overlooked beauty hidden within. Steven’s artworks ask us to slow down and start to consider our surroundings more carefully so we can develop our own individual take on a world we look at but seldom see.

Undertaking a long running research project with Italian Art Historian Sara Riccardi, they have together been recording their conversations on various points in history, technique and lifestyle from the Renaissance, the Dutch Golden Age of painting, Bauhaus, Abstract Expressionism to the contemporary - on how all these influences inform our outlook and, more importantly, on the possibility of finding the silence beneath the surface that connects everything and everyone together.