Simon Casson - Drashel 20th July - 10th August 2013 www.hiltonfineart.com
detail from Study for Drashel II oil on gesso primed paper 48 x 69cm ÂŁ1,000
Front cover: detail from Drashel, Urbem, oil on canvas, 87 x 94cm
Simon Casson - Drashel 20th July - 10th August 2013 Private View - Friday 19th July 6pm - 8pm RSVP
Hilton Fine Art 5 Margaret’s Buildings Bath BA1 2LP 01225 311311 info@hiltonfineart.com www.hiltonfineart.com
Popular culture is presently abound with the re-visiting of the dark, Gothic, bedtime fairytale, settling down alongside the vampiric clan of teenage-friendly tomes of late. In this aesthetical environment Simon Casson has cast aside as history, his fascination with the Classical World, to warmly embrace the old Somerset dialect and folklore which circle his rural home. “Drashel”, the title of the exhibition uses the atmospheric sensation of the word translating as ‘threshold’. The apple orchard or artchet, with it’s lines of stumpy horror movie trees, hanging heavy with the last diminutive apples of the year, lies cloaked with damp smoldering smeech. Old spent leaves are burnt to signal the end of the season, but never the apple wood as this would be to insight the anger of the preternatural predators amongst the cider barrels. The West Country is a county brimming with myth and legend, much of it concerning agriculture and fertility. Superstition reigns supreme, as fairy rings or gallitraps trace the earth beneath the boughs bearing fruit. Legend tells of other-worldly creatures with their lilliputian fingers troubling country lives, over the multi-layered phantasmal threshold of reality beyond the dimmet or twilight. Fantastical landscape, combining the English pastoral scene with an almost theatrical metaphysical back drop, lies behind the constructed situation of figure and still life. The paintings are each entitled with words torn from the old Somerset dialect, centuries in use, to lay shafts of light onto the players behind the staged scenes. Pale pultrilitious lasses, blanketed in blossoms, surrounded by multi-layered drapery, stare out from the canvas, their identity obscured by paint smirches, smeared with fingers and brushes, allowing them to represent the ideal female, their full chronicles withheld. The pheasant and the deer emerge from the hedgerow, to engage with the viewer in the transcendental play, with paint itself playing a pivotal role - as talismanic as the charismatic dialect, the characters and the landscape. Simon Casson
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Drashel, Urbem, oil on canvas, 87x94cm ÂŁ4,500
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Study for Drashel, Bath I, oil on gesso primed paper, 48 x 69cm £1,000
Study for Drashel, Bath III, oil on gesso primed paper, 48 x 69cm £1,000
Study for Drashel, Bath II, oil on gesso primed paper, 48 x 69cm £1,000
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Sname, oil on canvas, 81 x 94cm ÂŁ4,500
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Artchet II, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm ÂŁ2,000
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Litsome, oil on canvas, 60 x 80cm ÂŁ4,000
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Woak, oil on board, 81 x 94cm ÂŁ4,500
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Culver, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm ÂŁ2,000
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Mither Ho, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm ÂŁ2,000
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Blissom VII, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm ÂŁ2,000
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Blissom VII, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm ÂŁ2,000
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Fabula Pentamerone I, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm ÂŁ2,000
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Lupercalia (Study) IV, charcoal, conte and gesso on paper 56 x 76cm ÂŁ1,250
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Study for Drashel, Bath IV, oil on gesso primed paper, 48 x 69cm £1,000
Study for Drashel, Bath V, oil on gesso primed paper, 48 x 69cm £1,000
Study for Smeech and Hrain I, oil on gesso primed paper, 48 x 69cm £1,000
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Hesione XV, screeprint on somerset satin, 76 x 57cm ÂŁ400
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Hesione XIII, screeprint on somerset satin, 76 x 57cm ÂŁ400
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Hilton Fine Art 5 Margaret’s Buildings Bath BA1 2LP 01225 311311 info@hiltonfineart.com www.hiltonfineart.com