Stephen McCurdy

 

Studied music and cello at Canterbury University.

 

Subsequently worked as a composer, music producer and occasional songwriter for NZ music, theatre, television and film.

 

Began painting seriously in the late 90s, and has infrequently exhibited.

​

'There seem to be two broad strands in my painting. One is figurative, human, and often theatrical. The other is more abstract, though never entirely so. I am interested in myth, in drama and belief.

 

There are always ghosts. Every moment, every place, every event, is a deep palimpsest bearing the mingled traces of countless happenings, feelings, lives, memories, possibilities. Nothing is entirely erased, and nothing is perfectly remembered.

 

I try to get on canvas something raw, inconsolable and strange at the heart of things, that exists in perpetual tension with our yearnings for order and harmony, for justice and connection, for kindness.

​

My paintings are not of things I've seen or imagined.

They're just what I find when I paint.'