Simon Casson Exhibition Brochure

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

5

Drashel, Urbem, oil on canvas, 87x94cm ÂŁ4,500

6

7

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

8

9

Sname, oil on canvas, 81 x 94cm ÂŁ4,500

10

11

Artchet II, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm ÂŁ2,000

12

13

Litsome, oil on canvas, 60 x 80cm ÂŁ4,000

14

15

Woak, oil on board, 81 x 94cm ÂŁ4,500

16

17

Culver, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm ÂŁ2,000

18

19

Mither Ho, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm ÂŁ2,000

20

21

Blissom VII, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm ÂŁ2,000

22

23

Blissom VII, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm ÂŁ2,000

24

25

Fabula Pentamerone I, oil on canvas, 36 x 41cm ÂŁ2,000

26

27

Lupercalia (Study) IV, charcoal, conte and gesso on paper 56 x 76cm ÂŁ1,250

28

29

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

30

31

Hesione XV, screeprint on somerset satin, 76 x 57cm ÂŁ400

32

Hesione XIII, screeprint on somerset satin, 76 x 57cm ÂŁ400

33

Hilton Fine Art 5 Margaret’s Buildings Bath BA1 2LP 01225 311311 info@hiltonfineart.com www.hiltonfineart.com