Step inside a giant painting and get lost in a landscape inspired by the Essex coast

Discover over 30 acrylic paintings and drawings made since 2020, an early watercolour Simon painted when he was 23, and three new series created especially for Firstsite.

Existing and brand new works are placed over newly painted surfaces that respond to Firstsite’s architecture, light and atmosphere, layering paint, process and memory.

With multiple entrances and exits, and carefully framed viewpoints inspired by the bird hides and pillboxes found across the Essex landscape, there’s no single way to experience the exhibition.

Wander, pause and look again as the artworks come alive around you, with paintings spilling onto the gallery walls and a soundscape bringing the Essex coast indoors.

About the exhibition

For more than 40 years, Frinton-based artist Simon Carter has walked, drawn and painted the landscape around him.

“From the Landscape” brings together this long relationship with the Essex coast and countryside in an exhibition that asks us to look at painting in a different way.

Through paint, Simon explores the act of looking, building up layers of colour and texture over months and sometimes years.

Traces of places, plants, views and memories become held within each work, echoing the layers of the landscape itself.

What to expect

Choose your own route through the exhibition, moving between paintings, painted walls and installation. Different entrances, exits and framed viewpoints mean that the exhibition looks different depending on where you stand.

See a 19-metre ‘groyne’ wall carrying 500 monochrome ‘painted sketches’. Watch them move across the wall like a gust of wind, gathering in intensity at the centre.

Listen to the Essex coast through a specially created soundscape made from recordings Simon captured during his daily walks.

About the artist

Simon Carter is an Essex-based artist and curator. He studied at Colchester Institute (1980–1981) and then North East London Polytechnic (1981–1984).

In 2013, he collaborated with artist Robert Priseman to form the artist-led group Contemporary British Painting and then the ‘East Contemporary Art Collection’, the first dedicated collection of contemporary art for the East of England, which is housed at the University of Suffolk, Ipswich.

Simon is President of Colchester Art Society and has been Artist-in-residence at the University of Essex and Firstsite, Colchester. He is represented by Messum’s.

With special thanks to Firstsite Collectors’ Group and Trevor Fenwick whose generous support has made this exhibition possible.