Stephen Price: A Distinctive Approach to Portraiture

Capturing Emotion and Identity Through Mixed Media

Stephen Price's canvases pair emotional depth and visual complexity through humanistic portraits made with charcoal, pastels, and acrylic. The material choice is far from arbitrary: Price's use of charcoal lends textural nuance and speaks to his celebration of black identity.

Price’s work harmonizes diverse elements—emotional nuance, historical context, and material choices—into a coherent visual language. The layered charcoal presents windows with sub-surface tones, giving each piece a sense of vulnerability. This tenderness contrasts with Price’s abstract, loose techniques, resulting in ambiguously smoky and evocative works. 

By using diverse tools to construct his pieces, Price extends beyond the traditional to include photographic source material from the internet in his portraits. This curated blend of imagination and real-world elements allows him to depict figures that seem to exist outside time and space constraints. They inhabit self-contained worlds built upon the artist’s layered techniques and emotional undercurrents.

Colour as Emotional and Historical Narrative

The nuanced understanding of colour allows Price to convey emotion and history quickly. Psychological insights and art historical contexts inform his paintings' atmospheric hues. This lends a weighted significance to the colour palette, making it an active participant in the storytelling of each piece.

Price is particularly interested in exploring the concept of temporality in his works. His application of charcoal and acrylic paint layers into a tactile narrative that is rough and soft—this textured approach does more than catch the eye; it captures the ephemeral nature of emotion and time, visible in every brushstroke and smudge of charcoal.

Biography & Recognition and Exhibitions

Since his first solo exhibition, "Luminous Portraits" at Gallery At Home in Usk, Wales, in 2021, Price's artwork has gained increasing recognition. His pieces have found homes among international collectors from the United States to Malaysia and have been showcased in group exhibitions, including at Chilli Art Projects in London and Kó Art Space in Lagos.

Stephen Price (1995) was born and raised in Italy for 19 years after his parents emigrated from Ghana. In 2014 he moved with his family to Birmingham (UK) where he discovered his interest for Art. From that moment he decided to study Art & Design in College then graduated in 2020 at the University of Northampton in BA Fine Art Painting and Drawing.