As Edvard Munch sat down with his notebook at the turn of the twentieth century, a new creation myth emerged in the head of the Norwegian artist. Set on a desert island, Omega (the first female) follows her impulse and chooses the company of animals over that of Alfa (the first man). Little by little the prose poem spirals out of control igniting sensations of love, desire, jealousy, betrayal, revenge and forgiveness. Emphasising the dreams and ideals of the Symbolist movement - of which Munch is considered as one of the great contributors - this alternate version of Adam and Eve may on the surface be a story of complex human emotions, but ultimately it is about the primeval co-existence that humans share with all living creatures.

The connection between human and animal is one of the pillars of Simpson’s work. Like Munch, Simpson finds himself submerged into the inspirational paste that goes beyond our shared genetic inheritance, uncovering myths and folk tales going back centuries. On his canvases legendary half-man-half-animal beings, such as the minotaur and centaur from Greek and Roman mythology, are allowed to escape the historical constraints of the labyrinth or deep forests; and looking to the constellations of the night sky - where ancestors eternalised their gods and the world around them - the artist finds Artemis’ huntress, Callisto, in the form of Ursa-Major, re-linking the human imagination to the physical world.

Other works are more down to earth, simply proposing a narrow intimate encounter that is often the subject of Simpson’s drawings and paintings. In close scenes, a pack of wolves is led by a female disguised in a wolf’s fleece; foxes accompany a girl into a forest at night; or a majestic lion reflects upon a naked female succumbing herself to the king of the savannah. Although the characters may be distanced by evolution there is a common recognition - even acceptance - of the mutual existence and dependence of the other.

Simpson’s fascination with Munch’s story about Alfa and Omega became an influence to the artist’s work titled Omega and the Bear. In Munch’s poem - and the twenty-two lithographs supplementing it - a connection between human beings and the rest of nature is evident. Exposing that the choice to neglect the animal past are causing imbalances within the natural world. Omega and the Bear is stripped from many of Munch’s intricate psychological drives and succeed in connecting two creatures by removing all barriers imagined. Here, an unclothed female sits in front of a bear, mirrored by their pose, with the girl’s hands gesturing an offering or an attempt to a reconciliation.

The fragility of Simpson’s scene is emphasised by the presentation of the work. Subjects are detached from any backdrop and by keeping the colour palette monochrome he directs the viewer’s attention to what is important and offers few distractions. There is no colour scheme that leads the audience astray, only plenty of subtle close-up details. In his works on paper, Simpson prefers a monotype technique where each layer is painted by hand onto glass or metal, before transferred to plates used for printing. It is a laborious process, but one that makes each final print unique and gives it a matt and fine-grainy surface texture that allows the layers of ink to affect each other.

Referencing the relationship with nature, Omega and the Bear is a powerful, poetic imagery that sits somewhere in between childhood imagination and adult reasoning.

In recent years, Simpson has started an exploration of the natural landscape that he often excluded in his work before; showing aspects of nature that lies beyond the visible. On paper, a small forest hideaway is seen washed in the light of a late evening, and in another work, undefined pine trees emerge from the paper in a woodland that seems to have no clear frontier. The new series has received much acclaim, and in 2024, Simpson was included for a second year at the prestigious Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

Following the representation of John Simpson, who was first introduced to the visitors of the summer group show at Eyestorm in 2011, Omega and the Bear was released as a serigraph in a collaboration with Eyestorm; making its debut at Christies Multiplied art fair in London in October of 2014. Created as a monoprint and printed as a 9-colour serigraph, the edition of 50 is signed and numbered on front.

To view the print edition in further detail and to find more information about available works by John Simpson, visit the artist’s page here.