Simon Carter lives on the Essex coast, close to the beaches and salt marshes that are the source material for most of his paintings. Although he spends time each week drawing in the landscape, the watercolours are all made in the studio. Carter makes them in order to think about the canvases he is working on, using the developing compositions as a way of structuring the watercolours. He tries to make them directly and simply, although some of them are scrubbed back and reworked several times. He aims to let the paint do its own thing – flow, spread, stain, granulate, bleed and layer.

Carter is an artist and curator who was born in Chelmsford, Essex in 1961. He studied at Colchester Institute (1980–81) and then North East London Polytechnic (1981–84). In 2013 he collaborated with artist Robert Priseman to form the artist led group Contemporary British Painting and then the East Contemporary Art Collection, the first dedicated collection of contemporary art for the East of England which is housed at the University of Suffolk, Ipswich.

Carter is President of Colchester Art Society and has been Artist-in-residence at the University of Essex and Firstsite, Colchester. He is represented internationally by Messum’s.