Missing image

© copyright The Artist

GESTURING HIKER 1983

Steven Campbell (1953 – 2007)

Details

Dimension
166.5 X 132 CM
Media
WOOD CUT
Accession number
P5627

Summary

Campbell’s painting is figurative, abundant in bizarre references to Darwin, Michel Foucault and P G Wodehouse among others. The vivid iconography and imagery are, to some extent, explained by the totally improbable titles, which may make some sense out of the fantasy taking place on the canvas, but still leave the viewer perplexed. The paintings are imposing in size, rich in colour, and peopled with comic figures in hairy tweed suits, attempting to cope with various ludicrously threatening situations. The figures are all male – ‘I painted a woman once’, the artists commented, ‘but it didn’t out’. Gesturing Hiker, is a woodcut, done at the same time as a series of Hiker paintings dating from 1983, which included titles such as Owl butting a hiker on the knee and Hikers’ ballet with yawning child. The woodcut is especially good at capturing the fibrous quality of Campbell’s ubiquitous tweed suits and synamic pose of the striding hiker.

Glossary

  • Canvas

    A piece of cloth woven from flax, hemp or cotton fibres. The word has generally come to refer to any piece of firm, loosely woven fabric used to paint on. Its surface is typically prepared for painting by priming with a ground.

  • Painting

    Work of art made with paint on a surface. Often the surface, also called a support, is a tightly stretched piece of canvas, paper or a wooden panel. Painting involves a wide range of techniques and materials, along with the artist's intellectual concerns effecting the content of a work.

  • Woodcut

    A relief print made by printing from the top surface of a plank of wood into which a design has been cut with gouges or knives. The cuts (which show up white in the print) are usually quite bold because of the texture and grain of the plank, whether hard or soft wood. This term is broadly used to cover any print from a wooden block.