Steven Campbell (artist)

Steven Campbell ( [1953] - August 15, 2007) was a Scottish artist mainly concerned with pictorial representation. He was labelled as one of the New Glasgow Boys or "Glasgow Pups" along with Peter Howson, Ken Currie and Adrian Wisniewski who studied together at the Glasgow School of Art.

His work is exhibited in Glasgow Museums, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, the British Council, Tate Britain in London and the Tate in Liverpool.

He was born in Glasgow and attended Rutherglen Academy, leaving at age sixteen. He started out in his working life as a steelworker, then worked as a fitter and engineer for seven years. At the steelworks he read existential literature in the crane cabin. He then tried his hand as an artist, attending Glasgow School of Art from 1978-82. After graduating, he was a scholar on the Fulbright program in New York. His first one-man show in 1983 in New York attracted considerable attention. He had considerable success at the Barbara Toll gallery in the city.

He became critically and commercial successful, particularly at his exhibition at the Third Eye Centre in Glasgow in 1985.

His work featured in the "New Image Glasgow" exhibition (1985) and in the Edinburgh Festival exhibition "The Vigorous Imagination" (1987).

Later on he nearly gave up painting, going into a self-imposed exile, only to return after almost ten years in 2002 with a lauded show "The Caravan Club" at Edinburgh's Talbot Rice Gallery.

He died of a ruptured appendix.

References

* [http://www.art-company-scotland.com
* [http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article2295695.ece Obituary, "The Times", 21 August 2007]
* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2161068,00.html Obituary, "The Guardian", 3 September 2007]
* [http://news.independent.co.uk/people/obituaries/article2924418.ece Obituary, "The Independent", 4 September 2007]