Artists

Steve Birss  A Waking Dream

As its title confirms, A Waking Dream is not an exhibition of portraits of particular individuals. Birss subjects occupy the uncertain and shallow spaces of his paintings, residents in images refined by the artist to extract questions.

Birss paintings begin with notes and sketches of the elements he wants for each work and its central image. Then he just lets it happen: A lot of the ideas come from phrases or images I pick up quickly. I write them down and try to crystallise them. I am just trying to deliver a feeling or emotion and atmosphere.

There are contemporary painters whose work I look at like Californian dark artist Michael Hussar, he is influenced by Renaissance painters, but I also like Caravaggio (1571- 1710), his dramatic contrasts of light and dark are important to me.

Sometimes I work with a title and go with it but with a painting like The Sky is Falling the title came later – while I was doing the painting. I started with the idea of someone in a space that you can’t really define and I had this image of these birds falling over and around. The figure looking at the viewer was just an image that came in my head, but I like people to work out their own iteration for the images. I have never been one for cluttering what I am doing.

Dr. Warren Feeney