Liverpool Street Gallery

Steven Harvey - Artist Page

 
 
 
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Steven Harvey


"I savor solitude, especially when I find myself enveloped by the great, vast landscape of this country. 

To walk alone in the desert allows me to consider what instinctively emerges in the silence. Preconceived ideals are challenged and the arrogant desire to label all things becomes superfluous. It is here that my dialogue with abstract imagery is heightened and I am left to question, how does one paint this experience of nature? 

Because painting, to me, is an adventurous and intuitive practice, using paint as an illusory device to form recognisable imagery seems to be a contradiction, which serves only to distract my sense of process. 

Rigorously I investigate the sculptural qualities of oil paint. Pigment is sanded and ground into the bedrock of accumulated surfaces where reservoirs of colour shift and evolve. The composition reveals itself when a persistent form claims the final space. 

With the double painting constructions, back-to-back paintings fold into one condensing my experience of open space into a freestanding entity, where colour and form reposition with each viewpoint. A visual play can be entered into in much the same way we take pleasure in absorbing an immense landscape that encompasses our peripheral vision. It is here that I ask the viewer to imagine or determine the boundaries of form. 

The result of this particular layering process is that the paintings redefine themselves as objects. And, for me, the object moves closer to the curiously beautiful, yet uncompromising essence of nature." 

- Steven Harvey, 2008

Steven Harvey was born in 1965 in Sydney, Australia. Harvey completed a Bachelor of Art (Education) at the City Art Institute, Sydney in 1986 and completed a Post Graduate Diploma in 1989. In 1994 Harvey graduated with a Masters of Art (Painting) from the University of New South Wales College of Fine Arts. 

From 1994 to 1998 Harvey held solo exhibitions at the Coventry Gallery, Sydney including Walking Through (1994), Works from the Riverina (1996), Float (1997) and Summon (1998). Harvey also featured in annual group exhibitions at Coventry Gallery from 1994 to 1999. In 2000 Harvey held a solo exhibition titled Lure at Martin Browne Fine Art, Sydney. Other notable solo exhibitions include: Grace (2002) at Martin Browne Fine Art, Apostle (2003), The Precipice Sessions I (2005) at Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, Night Bird (2004), Australian Limbo (2007), Finn’s Raft (2008), Ark 44: The Night Bird Prophecies (2009), and Neanderthal Scholar (2012) at Liverpool Street Gallery, Sydney. 

In 1997, Harvey was awarded an Artist in Residence at Arthur Boyd’s Bundanon Trust Studio in New South Wales. In 1998, Harvey was selected as the inaugural Artist in Residence at the University of New South Wales, Sydney which culminated in a solo exhibition titled Latitude held at the University.

He has participated in a number of key touring and invitational exhibitions, including Painting (2002) at the S.H. Ervin Gallery, The National Trust, Sydney and A Tribute to Western Australia (2003) at the Holmes à Court Gallery, Perth featuring works that explored the Western Australian landscape alongside those by Peter Sharp and Kate Turner.

Steven Harvey is represented in public collections including Artbank, The University of New South Wales, Tamworth Regional Gallery, The Macquarie Group Collection, New England Regional Art Museum, and private collections in the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand. Steven Harvey lives and works in Sydney.