Simon Carr

The devastation from the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly in New York City, weighs heavily on our all of minds. Simon Carr’s recent paintings celebrates the vibrancy of people’s connections and the energetic closeness of everyday life in New York. Carr’s broad, painterly touch and energy of his color and composition joyfully can remind us that the city will soon return and help us to look past our cloistered situations to the future delights and aggravations of being much closer than six feet apart.

John Goodrich wrote in a 2017 review the 2017 solo exhibition at the Bowery Gallery: Simon Carr: Scenes and Stories: Recent Paintings

Captured broadly in scumbled strokes, Carr’s almost featureless pedestrians and horseback riders resonate like natural condensations of their surroundings. The artist’s gift for enveloping, atmospheric space shows throughout. Dog-walkers and stroller-pushing parents move before sunset skies, bathed in a palpable and very particular light. Pedestrians and dogs dot the sidewalk in front of a bakery at night; the mute gestures of both say worlds about their connectiveness, as mothers tend to toddlers and dogs stretch leashes to touch noses. Each painting comprises in effect a mise-en-scène, realized through an affectionate choreography of the gestures of humans, animals, and their accessories.”

Simon Carr lives and works in New York City. His recent paintings, drawings and prints have focused on street scenes and subway scenes in New York City. He has exhibited widely, most recently at Bowery Gallery, where he had a solo exhibition of his work, Inside the World: Scenes from City and Country, in January 2020. He teaches Drawing at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, part of CUNY.

Link to the catalog of the Bowery Gallery show with an essay by Martica Sawin as well as an interview between Martica Sawin and Simon Carr.