Simon Casson’s paintings can be found in high-end city hotels and the collection of HRH King Charles III, but the former artist in residence at Forde Abbey continues to be inspired by his countryside home
Emma Bovill Somerset Life December 2025
This year is a milestone one for contemporary figurative artist Simon Casson. Not only does it mark three decades since his first solo exhibition, fresh from extended art studies at the Royal Academy of Arts, but the unveiling of one of his most epic projects to date, bringing his painterly precision and lyrical storytelling to the Corinthia Bucharest hotel.
The hotel opened in April 2025, marking a return to its former Belle Epoque grandeur. Simon made several visits to the Eastern European capital from his home near Crewkerne for the commission, one of many he has been invited to undertake in opulent surroundings including Grantley Hall, The Lanesborough and The Cadogan hotels. The elegant environment of the Corinthia Bucharest didn’t detract Simon from his task; he produced a series of linked paintings and a mural drawing on the history of Romania’s royal family.
The project wasn’t without incident; a snowstorm in the UK nearly prevented the transportation by truck of preprepared elements of the larger scale paintings, which had only a 5mm margin to get out the door of his home studio in Hinton St George. Working on site also proved eventful due to the practicalities involved in painting within – and on – the walls of a luxury hotel.
‘I used to tiptoe late at night to find a space to wash one of my brushes,’ recalls Simon with warm humour. ‘There was just one colour, a powerful chrome dioxide green, which I couldn’t get out with white spirit or turpentine.’ Simon thankfully found a tap in the kitchens of what would go on to become a venue boasting culinary events hosted by Michelin-starred chefs.
Anecdotes aside (Simon also remembers making one trip to Bucharest with ‘a suitcase full of paint but not enough clothes’) Simon is at pains to stress the industry involved in the commission, particularly the artwork he created adorning the hotel’s rotunda. ‘It’s hard physically producing a mural,’ he explains. ‘You need to be perpendicular to the painting so for the ceiling you’re lying down.’
The ‘floor’, he clarifies, was 4m high scaffolding, and there would often be over a dozen members of hotel staff avidly watching. It was a curious situation for the artist who, although a former senior lecturer in Fine Art at Plymouth University and teacher at Chelsea UAL and no stranger to being centre stage at major shows, prefers the privacy of his studio when producing his paintings, applauding those who open theirs.
At the time of writing Simon was working on completing paintings ‘in rotation’ for an exhibition The Floralia at Long & Ryle gallery in Westminster, which has represented him for most of his career as an artist. ‘It’s a bit ferocious at the moment,’ adds Simon, who gave himself no respite after completing the Corinthia Bucharest project before pitching into new pieces.
‘THERE’S A POETRY
and academic
heritage to his work’
‘I’m happy when I’m keeping busy, when I’m working on ideas,’ he says by way of excuse, not that one is needed. ‘I’ve always been obsessed with research and that’s embedded in my work.’
The Floralia explores the Roman festival honouring the goddess Flora, one of many examples of the historical themes underpinning Simon’s visual output. He uses many of the traditional methods employed by classical painters, recounting a visit to the Wallace Collection to count the number of brush strokes on a foot in a François Boucher painting.
‘There’s a poetry and academic heritage to his work,’ attests gallerist Sarah Long, co-founder of Long & Ryle. ‘While the rest of the world went minimal, he went in the opposite direction. He’s struck true to his mission the entire time; history and myth are there in the background but it’s a vehicle for his painting. As a technician he’s an extraordinary artist, a visionary.’
The partnership with Long & Ryle (Simon is also represented by Galerie de Bellefeuille in Montreal and Toronto) is a significant creative collaboration in an illustrious career which also includes working closely with his wife, antiques dealer Sheridan Casson. Simon’s studio is peppered with her carefully sourced props such as Victorian taxidermy and antique draperies which are used as stimulus for his compositions. Their move to Somerset in the early 2000s, when it was still, as Sheridan describes ‘quite a new thing to skip out of London’ would make a huge difference to Simon’s practice and, he asserts, ‘work-family balance’.
“To me it was an overlooked county,’ says Simon, who would begin an enduring fascination with local dialects and folklore, going on to be artist in residence at Forde Abbey in 2012.
They quickly became ‘a family of walkers’ with, as Sheridan remembers, ‘chickens, mad rescue dalmatians and pony riding’ as the backdrop to daily life, the country idyll proving an enduring motif in Simon’s work.
‘By making a person more abstract,
YOU CONNECT WITH THE PAINTING as a whole’
‘They’re very sumptuous, full of fabrics, food, floral and fauna,’ reflects Sarah of his paintings. ‘He loves the fleshiness – that’s where rural Somerset appeals.’
‘He’s interested in the classical narrative from a post-modern standpoint,’ elaborates Sheridan. It’s impossible not to draw attention to the obscured gaze of the majority of the figures depicted in his ensembles, designed, Simon illuminates, ‘to draw the gaze of the viewer to other parts of the painting and to create an ideal figure’ rather than focusing on more literal portraits.
The approach may be interpreted as reductive or subversive, but this isn’t Simon’s intention. ‘I’ve always shied away from the shock of the new,’ he muses, having begun his career alongside the then wild Sensation exhibition. ‘The work is aiming to be more eternal,’ says Sheridan in support. ‘By making a person more abstract, you connect with the painting as a whole. They’re iconic figures; an Everyman – or Everywoman.’ The perspectives of Sheridan and Sarah are valuable in their roles as intermediaries between the artist and stakeholders or the viewing public respectively. For commissions such as the Corinthia Bucharest, where a private owner, hotel operator and design team all had input on the brief, Sheridan acted as a bridge, allowing Simon to focus on bringing the paintings to fruition on deadline.
‘People find it easier to be frank with me,’ she states, and Simon evidently values Sheridan’s advice. ‘I sometimes say, “Can I borrow your eyes and head for a minute”,’ he divulges, a benefit of having a home studio in contrast to the many hours he spent commuting across London before their move to Somerset.
Simon has enjoyed watching the Somerset art scene develop, citing visits to exhibitions at Hauser & Wirth and in Frome, but he gives the impression that time spent in the studio is his preference. ‘It’s not a romantic environment, it gets dirty,’ he admits. “There are times I don’t do anything, I just do my paintings.’
With artworks owned by private collector including HRH King Charles III an Hollywood royalty Ted Danson as well a corporate collectors including Barclays Bank PLC, it’s obvious that for Simon getting on with the day job is hitting the right note.
“The work has a grandeur, a sense something historical and deeply ancient but also of time rushing by,’ says Sarah ‘His paintings are really exquisite and he’s continually developing and pushing the boundaries.’
Simon will be exhibiting with Long & Ryle at the London Art Fair in January
Words : Emma Bovill Somerset Life. Emma Bovill is the Founder of SaltBaked managing content across arts and culture. Further information on Emma Bovill can be found HERE
Somerset Life December 2025
