Steve Capper,    who trained at Manchester College of Art,

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is an artist who sits firmly in the tradition of northern school expressionism, but whose bold and contemporary use of colour, and willingness to experiment with texture, places him at the forefront of those who are taking the visual motifs of northern art in a new direction.

 

In this he is following in the footsteps of William Ralph Turner (1920-2013) who borrowed from the pioneering visions of Vlaminck and Soutine, to distance himself from a purely realist representation of the industrial north and its surrounding landscape.

 

In the case of this artist, the influences are less obvious. Picasso and Braque are a given, but he perhaps has most in common with the “abstract figuration” of Bernard Buffet.

 

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