Simon Naish’s work is a hybrid of pop art sensibilities and narrative figure painting, exploring the intersection between traditional painting techniques and contemporary forms of representation. His imagined histories are painted on large scale canvases; mock-epics which reflect a broad range of influences from literature and mythology to more contemporary visual sources.

Echoing comic book narratives, yet subverting the scale and immediacy inherent within contemporary forms of visual storytelling, Naish’s recent paintings are labour intensive and large in scale; mirroring the history painting of the past which retold heroic exploits with exaggerated grandeur. Abstract elements are combined with the figurative in a form of painted collage which exaggerates the artifice of the subject matter in order to heighten the sense of the unreal. Playful images of innocence are cast against a backdrop of bodily motifs and themes of violence, dispossession and discord reflecting a sense of menace and unease.

In 2006 Simon Naish was shortlisted for the John Moores 24 painting prize.

Birth of the Starmen, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas, 140cm x140cm
The Starmen go in search of The Mothers, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas, 152cm x 137cm
Figures in a Landscape, Oil and Acrylic on Canvas, 100cm x 100cm

E: naishsimon@hotmail.com