Gregg Simpson

Born in Ottawa in 1947, Gregg Simpson, has been active in visual art since the mid 1960s. He was instrumental in Vancouver’s 1960’s multi-media era at the Sound Gallery and Intermedia. His work has been exhibited in museums internationally and is included in over 100 private and public collections in, Europe, Asia and North America.

Simpson’s art has been written about and studied in several art journals, history books and academic studies at several major institutions including: the Sorbonne, Paris; the Université Rabelais de Tours, France; the Accademia Tiberina, Rome and most recently at the Université de Rouen, France.

In Paris, his work has been exhibited and published by two renowned art historians who were both colleagues of the Surrealist Group’s founder, André Breton. The first, José Pierre, included the artist in his landmark book, L’Univers Surréaliste, (Editions Somogy, 1983) and in 1999, famed author and historian, Sarane Alexandrian included his work in the periodical, Supériore Inconnu.

Since 1994, Simpson has spent much of his time working and exhibiting in France, Italy and Spain. In 2001, he exhibited a 20 year retrospective of in Seillans, France, the last home of one of his heroes, Max Ernst. In May 2000, he exhibited at the Fortezza di Montalcino, a 14th Century castle in Tuscany, the subject of a BRAVO TV documentary, A New Arcadia, The Art of Gregg Simpson.

Simpson’s work has evolved from the collages and Pop-influenced paintings of the 1960s, through the neo-Surrealism of the 1970s to an organic abstraction in the last twenty five years. The west coast rainforest where he grew up has always been an underlying factor in Simpson’s work, especially since moving to Bowen Island in 2005.