Almost all of Stephen Park’s drawings and prints of the last thirty years have been of black shapes on white paper, a process which began as an exercise in graphic invention. In Park’s words:
‘I noticed they became more interesting when I stopped interrogating them for meanings, and I stopped worrying about why one shape was next to another. Now it seems as though the shapes want to come into existence and my part is to show up and work for them. I know they are finished when they become like objects that take their place among the other things. I like some more than others, but that doesn't seem important, especially if other people feel differently'.
The flat, sharp quality of Parks’ ambiguous shapes lends itself perfectly to screenprinting as seen in the limited edition print made at the studio in 2013 with Kip Gresham titled ‘Shameless’.
Park graduated from Goldsmiths College, London in 1985 and went on to study sculpture at the Slade School, London. Whilst at Goldsmiths he was included in the New Contemporaries exhibition at the ICA London and was briefly associated with the YBA’s, showing his work in the seminal exhibition 'Freeze'. Subsequently, he was awarded the Henry Moore Fellowship at the Slade. He has exhibited in the UK and abroad, and taught widely in various establishments including The Royal College of Art. He lives and works in Devon.
