My practise explores fantasy and desire and queer identity in Britain, and the way masculinity is perpetuated in the British class structure. This is primarily achieved through portraiture of male figures, usually on the cusp of adulthood, represented in shades of pastel. Taking aesthetic cues from pop art, Victorian aestheticism, and the classical, my work seeks to situate contemporary anxieties in a plastic ‘neverland’, using the past to address the persistent questions of distance and love. 

With the current global situation, I have been called to working on purely digital works, to be exhibited in a digital format. To adapt to this changing mode of display, I have re-appropriated the rural scenes of my childhood into the digital space. With this I interrogate our relationship to fantasy and the aesthetic ideal as well as the dual edge of connectivity and isolation that can be found both in the digital realm and the real.

Website – www.charliesteele.com

Email – charliesteele@hotmail.co.uk

Instagram – Instagram.com/isthismania