The Art of Simon Palmer

Over the last three decades Simon Palmer has become one of Britain’s leading watercolour artists; exhibiting regularly in London and represented in many private collections in the UK and abroad. This large-format hardback book brings together the best of his work with 115 colour plates spanning his career up to the present day. His subject is his chosen home of North Yorkshire and like other British artists before him he draws a spiritual connection from the surrounding countryside. Anyone visiting Yorkshire will immediately recognise Palmer country: the narrow lanes, railway bridges, the drystone walls and winding fencing, stone churches and farms, ancient trees and new saplings and, on the horizon, the distant moors waiting to claim back this now domesticated land. He combines a powerful identification with spirit of place, poetic and sometimes surreal vision. The result is an intriguing and intensely personal interpretation of his world. Palmer is first and foremost a landscape painter. His connection with his much loved home and the world of his imagination has led him to see what others do not. In this sense he is a visionary painter.