BIO

Simon Barwick is an abstract artist from the UK, residing and working in Brisbane, Australia. He graduated with Honours in Literature and Philosophy from Middlesex University, London and as a result his work is informed by an intellectual rigour, continually interrogating the complex relationships between the various fundamental elements of his own painting practice.

Working predominately with the line as his primary unit of expression, Barwick’s work is as interested in enacting simplification through an almost minimalist reduction as it is in pushing one or another of its formal components (colour, tone, texture) to a kind of breaking point. The results of this somewhat dichotomous approach to painting allow us to see a single artist coming at his own aesthetic predispositions from multiple angles: an extended scrape; a crisp line; a proliferation of colour; a meditation on a single aspect of a vast palette.

Underlying all of Barwick’s work is a deep love of painting itself—of shape and colour—as well as a singular fascination with the expressive potential of what can be achieved in a given composition merely through the juxtaposition of a flat plane and a textured plane, through the careful balancing of different tones within the perceptual field of a single canvas.

His works are in private collections in Australia, Canada, France, UK and the USA.

CV

Born in Cheshire, England
Resides and works in Brisbane, Australia

Education

2020 Certificate: Post-War Abstract Painting, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA
2017 Mini MBA in Marketing, Marketing Week, London, UK
1991 BA (Hons) Literature & Philosophy, Middlesex University, London, UK

Selected exhibitions:

2024, Salon des Refuses, Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Award
2024, Virtual Finalist, Brisbane Rotary Art Show
2024, Exhibited Finalist, Revival Art Prize
2023, Group Exhibition, ‘ECHO’, Side Gallery
2023, Salon des Refuses, Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Award
2023, Exhibited Finalist, Revival Art Prize
2022, Solo Exhibition, ‘Exploded Lines: Colour, Tone and Texture’, Latrobe Art Space
2022, Salon des Refuses, Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Award
2022, Group Exhibition, ‘We Are Bienarté, An Aesthetic Synergy’, Latrobe Art Space
2022, Salon des Refuses, Lethbridge Landscape Prize
2021, Online Finalist, Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Award
2020, Online Finalist, Lethbridge 20000 Small Scale Art Award
2019, Exhibited Finalist, Rotary Art Spectacular
2019, Group Exhibition, ‘Painting For Peace’, BPC
2018, Group Exhibition, ‘Painting For Peace’, BPC