Steven Campbell

(1953–2007)

Campbell was born in the Burnside district of Rutherglen, attended the town's Academy and worked as an engineer at Clydebridge Steelworks before studying at Glasgow School of Art as a mature student, from 1978 to 1982. Initially he studied the then still new subject of performance art, but quickly gave this up for painting.

At the end of his studies he was awarded the Bram Stoker gold medal, and gained a Fulbright Scholarship which he used to go to New York to study at the Pratt Institute. This move resulted in many of his early exhibitions taking place in New York, including his first solo show, in 1983, at the Barbara Toll Gallery.

There is some dispute as to whether Campbell was one of the core group of students nurtured by the artist and tutor Alexander Moffat at Glasgow School of Art, including Peter Howson and Ken Currie,[5] but Campbell was certainly included by Moffat in the 1981 group show The Vigorous Imagination at the New 57 Gallery, Edinburgh, later known as the Fruitmarket Gallery, which was the first public showing of this group.

Campbell's style of painting is figurative, with a hard linear quality to the application of paint. The colour palette is strong, with rich colours tending to be dominated by a blue-green light. Campbell would boast of being a very fast painter, although it has been suggested he liked to exaggerate claims like this.