Exhibition review at Frost and Reed Gallery London

Nicholas Usherwood Galleries London 2009

Top of the painting hierarchy in the 18th C. Britain, history painting has suffered a more or less radical decline into oblivion ever since. The Glasgow Painters of the 80s, Campbell et al, did something to turn genre around and, over the last decade or so, the young English artist Simon Casson has been attempting something no less ambitious. His massive, complex canvases, rich with mythological reference and gorgeous in colour, on show at the now very go-ahead Frost & Reed gallery art works of extraordinary technical prowess and exuberant high spirits.