Simon Casson
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Simon Casson was born in York, England in 1965 and spent his childhood in Zambia. After a foundation course in Art and Design at Barnsley, South Yorkshire, Simon completed a Bachelor of Arts(Hons) at Exeter College of Art and Design. From there he went on to study for a Postgraduate Diploma in Printmaking at Central St Martins College of Art and Design in central London, completing hisart education in 1994 with a Masters Degree in Fine Art Painting from the prestigious Royal Academy of Art.
In a fusion of highly contrasting styles, Casson's monumental paintings forge together with shocking audacity two jarringly opposing intentions in painting. A pantheon of luscious, sensuous mythical figures, decked in coloured silks and set in heroic landscapes uneasily share the canvas with an anarchistic deconstructivist's overlay of stark flashes an unpeeling of layerswith slivers of vibrant colour, slashed and irreverent brushmarks and disembodied parts of other paintings. As such, Casson'spaintings can be read on multiple levels: as we peer through windows in the canvas to another world beyond we are at the same time comforted by beauty, yet unsettled by the vandalism that interrupts it. Casson's works are held in both public and private collections around the world, including those of H.R.H the Prince of Wales and the international headquarters of Barclays Bank, Shell and Fox Searchlight Pictures. In addition, Casson has become a highly decorated British artist, garnering the RoyalAcademy Medal for Painting and showing in solo and group exhibitions in the US, China, Spain, the Netherlands and the UK.
Casson now lives and works in Somerset, England with his wife,three daughters and his Dalmatians.