steve good

​My name is Steve Good. I was born in 1952. I have always loved to paint and create things, although I am a passionate collector of other peoples art too. Quite naturally, during the mid to late 1960’s, my teenage years, I was drawn to live the life of a “Hippy”. Spiritually, I connected well with the whole concept of “Flower Power” and “Peace”. I started my artistic studies with an Arts Foundation at Harrow College of Art – North West London.

After some happy years living and working in and around a canal side boatyard we moved to Marlow on Thames where we then settled near to “my beloved River Thames” prior to moving further upstream to Bampton in West Oxfordshire.

Apart from boats, reflections, water and light, my major influences of course include the magnificent Claude Monet for his vision, Van Gough whose style I love to attempt to emulate from time to time. However, perhaps less well known at this time but nonetheless a huge name in modern day abstract art, is American artist Jeffery Kroll with whom it seems I have much in common

Back in Harrow, during my early formative years, we students were given total freedom of expression and we were allowed to develop our skills at an age before we were too restricted by convention. There was no uniform and there were students, many of them female, up to the age of 20 and you couldn’t tell the difference between the tutors and the students. We even had a common room where people would stomp around listening to jazz, and blues, the Beatles and the Stones too. Perhaps it was here, in this world of total freedom that I first evolved my favoured abstract style which has since been described as being able . . . "to achieve reflective worlds of extraordinarily bold colour, colours that spill themselves dynamically, dramatically and mysteriously into and out of our natural world, thereby transporting us across seas and skies, to infinite places of impossible mystery which any curious minded person is surely delighted to be capable of imagining" .  All of which sounds really great, and really 'Arty' I'm sure but that not what I have in mind when I work? - In truth, I just try to relax and if the spirit is upon me, let it flow from within, while I just have fun making new and often very messy images - I love finger painting by the way).

By way of some further form of explanation for my undisciplined behaviors . . . Teachers at Harrow College of Art of that time included (Sir) Peter Blake, who later designed the famous cover art for The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, Ken Howard, the Royal Academy painter, and architect Sir Hugh Casson, who in the 1970s became president of the Royal Academy of Arts. Then there was the Cartoonist and comic illustrator Martin Newman. We all came together in wild rebellious yet creative groups of talent. This was also the era of David Hockney too, I was there from about 1966 to 1970 I think, although it was and remains a bit of a blur, what with the explosion of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, LSD and other substances, which will perhaps help you to understand my vividly colourful memories, especially of the girls all wearing those extra short mini skirts. Be in no doubt dear reader, every one of us was totally determined to disobey all of the rules and overturn convention at every possible opportunity. What great rebellious fun it was​!