Stephen Allwright
b.1969, South Africa
b.1969, South Africa
BIOGRAPHY
Stephen John Allwright was born in Prince Albert in the Great Karoo in 1969. He received a Bachelor of Social Science (economics and politics) degree from the University of Cape Town with honours in Economics. Stephen is a self-taught artist and has been practising since 1998. He currently lives and works in Barrydale.
Allwright began painting in earnest after leaving Cape Town to spend two years in near complete isolation in Die Hel, a remote village in the Swartberg Mountains near his birthplace, Prince Albert. Since then he has been prolific, exhibiting most recently at the Tyburn Gallery in London and at SMITH in Cape Town.
Now living and working in Barrydale with his wife and young son, Allwright has refined an uncompromisingly honest and unmistakable style that is at times erotic and even violent but more often heart-wrenchingly tender. The work is a form of self-portraiture, although inverted: with the unfolding image as his guide, Allwright attempts to distill and decipher his impulsive responses to the manifest world by creating what he calls “an emblematic shorthand”.
Allwright began painting in earnest after leaving Cape Town to spend two years in near complete isolation in Die Hel, a remote village in the Swartberg Mountains near his birthplace, Prince Albert. Since then he has been prolific, exhibiting most recently at the Tyburn Gallery in London and at SMITH in Cape Town.
Now living and working in Barrydale with his wife and young son, Allwright has refined an uncompromisingly honest and unmistakable style that is at times erotic and even violent but more often heart-wrenchingly tender. The work is a form of self-portraiture, although inverted: with the unfolding image as his guide, Allwright attempts to distill and decipher his impulsive responses to the manifest world by creating what he calls “an emblematic shorthand”.
SELECTED WORKS
— Available Works
