B.

Eion Stevens first began exhibiting in 1979 at the Brooke Gifford Gallery in Christchurch and since that date has shown his work with most of the major New Zealand dealer galleries. As a direct result of this exposure many paintings are now in both public and private collections. Stevens was born in Dunedin in 1952 and graduated in 1973 with an honours diploma in Fine Arts from Otago Polytechnic.

During 1974-75 he attended Exeter College of Art in England where his formal art school training was extended. The evidence of this is present in much of his work and at times he feels it can be something of an inhibiting force to his creativity. Of his art school background he says, "My formal art school background is constantly at odds with a desire to paint intuitively".

As an experimenter in paint he considers that his relatively academic technique is driven by an eclectic and occasionally subversive collage of ideas.

Having a prime interest in content he feels that "his experimentation has to be seen against a backdrop of influences of a more literary character". Overall Stevens feels however that his work is "cyclic" and it is this nature that he has acknowledged in his selection for the artists project exhibition.

('Eion Stevens: Artists Project', Bulletin, No.51, May/June 1987, p.3)