Simon Casson’s paintings cross a cultural divide, uniting figurative art with the severity of abstract modernism. Casson, currently enjoying his first solo London exhibition, trained at the Royal Academy.
Using a muted palette evocative of 17th-century masters, he creates monumental paintings, in which half-draped neoclassical, Baroque figures – Venus, Danae, Circe and Penelope – materialise from an arrangement of blocks of colour worthy of Sean Scully. It is as if the history of 200 years of art has been condensed into a single canvas. The figures are almost all female – the images remarkably sensual , both in content and in execution. The somewhat subliminal impact of Casson’s work can be frustrating 
The somewhat subliminal impact of Casson’s work can be frustrating but, at its best, it is seductively engaging, evoking emotions and concepts central to the human condition, which were once embodied in the creatures of myth.