Simon Tozer
Simon was born in 1965 in Oxford, but spent his formative years in Devon in a hamlet perched on the lip of an extinct volcano. In this remote farming area, animals were more numerous than people, and so an interest in the mystery of animals, their inscrutability and ambivalent manner was born.
Following a painting degree at Portsmouth Polytechnic, Simon studied print-making at Chelsea College of Art where he discovered screenprinting, the process he still uses to produce his work.
He makes prints primarily from his imagination, the ideas developed through drawing and re-drawing. He has certain themes that he keeps returning to - the idea of movement and stasis, and the use of animals, particularly bears, to embody states of mind.
Screenprinting uses stencils rendered onto a fine nylon mesh stretched on a frame, the silkscreen. Prints are built up in layers, and each colour is created from a different drawing, which Simon creates by painting in gouache onto film. The colour layers are then printed one at a time using a squeegee. The final print is the original artwork, since prior to this it exists only as a group of monochromatic drawings.
