This website shows the diverse range of work by Stephen Raw, an artist whose artworks are concerned with language made visible.
Use the catalogue to see some of his recent paintings. Pieces such as the Touchstones haiku are commissions while others such as Book of Rememberance and Sarcophagus/Altar are personal.
Stephen’s breadth of subject-matter ranges from the Tolkien maps, to commercial lettering for publishers and designers through Letterforms, through to lettering cut into granite for architects. Click on the prints for sale to find out how to buy silkscreen prints or posters of exhibitions and lectures, including the 8 m square St Francis mural.
In much of his experimental work Stephen explores the gestural abstraction of the imagery of letterforms themselves. This reflects the manner in which writing is itself an abstraction from spoken language. In the same way that memory by its nature abstracts from experience, so letterforms abstract from writing and are per se an abstract artform. Recognising this is a growing band of collectors who have been buying his work.
"Raw's unique achievement is making unexpected, compelling harmonies between the thing said and the saying."
Michael Schmidt FRSL
"The message is deeply important, highly personal, and, in many instances, political, too."
The Independent
"What Stephen has done is something distinct and original in itself."
Edwin Morgan
"Visually stimulating, while thought provoking. Art indeed."
Baseline Magazine