Ian Simpson

Ian was born in 1933 and studied at Sunderland College of Art and the Royal College of Art, London.

He was awarded the Associateship of the Royal College of Art (ARCA) in 1958 and also an Abbey Travelling Scholarship to Italy.

From 1958 he has combined working as a painter and illustrator with a career in art education.

He was a visiting lecturer at several London Art Colleges before becoming Head of the Department of Visual Research at Homsey College of Art in 1965 and in1969 Head of Co-ordinated Studies.

From 1972 until 1988 he was Principal of St Martins of Art, London.

He has also been a visiting professor at Syracuse University, New York, USA.

He has won several prizes for painting, including first prize in the City of London Mayor’s Art Award. Purchasers of his paintings include the Glasgow City Art Gallery, the Nuffield Foundation,  the London Borough of Camden, and private collectors in the UK, the USA and Sweden.  He has exhibited widely, including the Royal Academy since 1956 and had several solo exhibitions.

He has written and presented three series of TV programmes for the BBC and had some twelve books published.  He has written a number of course books for the Open College of the Arts and the National Extension College.  His numerous magazine articles include interviews with a number of distinguished British artists.

He is currently a consultant to The Open College of the Arts.

Artist’s Statement:

My paintings are always based on something I have seen.

Particular kinds of landscapes and cityscapes have provided the subjects for many paintings but I am not exclusively a landscape painter.  Although I do not consciously try to paint a particular kind of picture or look for a certain type of subject, hindsight seems to suggest that I am concerned with interlocking shapes which are often found b y observing the landscape or cityscape from high viewpoints.

Above all, I have to find something in these interlocking shapes which creates for me an ‘incident’, an excitement, a tingle down the spine.

Painting for me is finding this ‘incident’, distilling it and transplanting it into paint.

The cityscapes are of views from the tower of Great St Mary’s Church in Cambridge