stephen marr ARTIST

Stephen Marr

Stephen Marr was born and raised in Yamba, a tiny coastal village on the North Coast of NSW, Australia. In the 1950s and 60s it was "saturated with poetic imagery and wonderful characters, half the town was drunk before noon". Stephen vividly remembers drawing with sticks in the sand, barefoot in the one-room school and his first teacher encouraging his drawings of trawlers heading out to sea surrounded by sharks:

"It was the age of 'do it yourself'. Toys were made out of sticks and tin cans. Mum sewed clothes, curtains and furnishing covers, Dad made boats and countless other practical objects."

After graduating from The National Art School in Newcastle, Stephen travelled extensively throughout Asia. He was astounded by the living art he encountered there, from the painting and carving that decorated houses and boats to the most banal of objects.

He returned to Australia inspired to build a simple, alternative energy house in the bush with his bare hands and a chainsaw. Setting up a kiln and crude pottery and teaching ceramics at the Technical College in Grafton, he managed to scrape together the finances he needed to finally make the move to the big smoke.

To support himself while continuing to work on his art, Stephen became involved in the film industry. All the years he had spent building his own dwellings, while drawing and painting, made him a natural as an art director. He began to work in America as a production designer and was soon directing projects both in Australia and overseas.

The death of his father was "a wake up call, a reminder of how short a life is. I found that I had a very personal story to tell and I began to paint this story using all the skills I had been accumulating through my life".

In 2000, the first major exhibition of Stephen Marr's work was held at Newport Artworks at Newport Beach, Sydney, where he created a fictional setting with a series of lyrical images and objects. The show was a sell-out. His storytelling style resonated with other peoples' life stories and a steady following grew on the Northern Beaches.

Since then, he has built upon this narrative, incorporating individually carved and painted wooden stages that serve as the canvas and frame for many of his paintings. These stages are integral to the work they carry, and at the same time add a sculptural element to the images.

In 2001, he exhibited at Raglan Gallery in Manly, coinciding with the Manly Arts Festival. The images in this show deeply reflected Marr's desire to express time and memory in a narrative style.

In December 2004, his Manly Regional Gallery show entitled, "Oceanic Phantascope", drew crowds of people visiting Sydney on holidays from countries all over the world. "The work had the effect of eliciting memories of long forgotten familiar places and events" was a commonly expressed comment in the visitor's book.

In 2006, Stephen's solo show, Listening to Cicadas, was shown at the Wallspace Gallery. The work in this exhibition built on the themes that have driven Stephen Marr's artistic expression. Joyously infused with light and colour, Marr's paintings tempt us to smell the sea, touch the crumbling walls and listen to the rising chorus of cicadas.

The next solo show at Wallspace was called On a Wing And A Prayer. This show saw the evolution of greater dimensionality within the frames and some pieces were actually wall sculptures. Stephen also exhibited several freestanding pieces of sculpture.

In 2008, 2009 and 2010 Stephen expanded his involvement in sculptural techniques with work being shown at Sculpture by the Sea in Bondi and Cottlesloe. His large figure "The Drifter" was purchased by the Melville City Council, in Western Australia.

With the success of this work and the joy of working on larger pieces for such a huge viewing public Stephen has directed his efforts primarily on creating marquettes that could be realized as full-scale sculptures. He has once more been successful with his with the SxS 2011 with a piece called "The Golden Buddha's Seaside Holiday"