Work
"To immerse yourself in the work of Nicholas Stedman is to feel both the softness of a weightless, floating body and the vertigo of an infinite descent."
Like the serene surface of a pond with dark and disturbing reflections, his paintings mirror our doubts in the face of the ocean of uncertainty we encounter each day. Each canvas becomes an island of reflection, where our creative and destructive impulses emerge, along with our most audacious risks.
About
Stedman’s atypical career has earned him a place as an outsider. This marginal position gives him a panoramic and penetrating viewpoint, often with a broader and less compartmentalized horizon than that offered by a more conventional path. With a freedom that is the privilege of outsiders, he has engaged in a profound and fruitful cross-disciplinary dialogue with artists from contemporary dance, circus, and poetry throughout his career.
His art, resolutely accessible and legible, far removed from the sometimes elitist tendencies of the contemporary art world, invites us to re-examine our preconceptions about the very definition of the artist.
Bio
Nicholas Stedman (b. 1953, Portsmouth, UK) is a British painter based in Palermo, Italy. Initially trained in the sciences, he pursued his artistic development in France, studying drawing at the Paris municipal art school (Place des Vosges), and later deepening his knowledge of materials with Nicolas Wacker at the École des Beaux-Arts. He also studied under the lyrical abstractionist Zao Wou-Ki at the Arts Décoratifs. Stedman began his professional artistic career in 1979 and lived in Paris until 2004 before relocating to Sicily.
His work has been exhibited in numerous solo shows, including ten in Paris, as well as in Rome, Toulouse, and Verona. He has participated in several group exhibitions across France, and his paintings are held in public and private collections, including Air France Industries and the Mairie de Vitry-sur-Seine. His works have also appeared on book covers, including The Art of Falling by Kim Moore (2015) and the Cambridge University Press textbook Health and Physical Education. In 2025, a monograph dedicated to the artist’s career and prefaced by Jade Lu, the Director of the Zao Wou-Ki Foundation in Taipei, was published by Jardino Editions.